10 Best Mobility | Flexibility Drills (PRE-WORKOUT)

The best mobility and flexibility drills are those that take the least amount of time to perform and deliver the most bang for your buck when it comes to getting you ready for your next workout. In this video, I cover the 10 best mobility and flexibility drills that you can do prior to your workout

What’s up, guys? Jeff Cavaliere, ATHLEANX. com. Don’t spend forever getting yourself ready to workout. You don’t have to.

Today I’m going to give you a very quick routine, one that flows from movement, to movement, to movement that’s going to get your ready, and a lot of different ways to prepare your body to train. I’m going to get right into it. Basically what you want to do is start with something that gets the posterior chain loose because one of the areas that gets most tight on us are our hamstrings, our backs; so you start with an inchworm. You come down here, you’re going to walk yourself out, and when you get to the bottom it’s not just about flexibility, guys. You also want stability, too.

We have stability by getting our shoulders in this position here. We walk ourselves back. We’re getting some compression of the shoulder joint. That’s a good thing for your shoulders. You’ll notice that when you come down, because of your tight hamstrings, your knees will kind of kick forward, and then you can get them straight about here.

The goal is, on each successive rep, to try to get your hamstrings to be able to stay back by keeping your knees back, further, and further on each rep. You work your way all the way out. 10 reps. On the last one you come right down – again, I said this would. Flow from one to the next.

You get in this 90-90 position here. 90 degrees at this hip, 90 degrees at that hip back there. Just like this. Now we want to get a lot done in one stretch. So we lean out, over this forward knee which is going to stretch the hell out of this forward hip here, and then we hook our elbow on the top of that knee here, like that, so we get this added stretch of the lats, and that backside – the posterior shoulder capsule here, on that side.

Then we reach out this way with our arms. Five seconds. Come out of it, go back down, and do it again. This is not a static holding routine. This is a dynamic stretching routine to get yourself prepared to train.

So you don’t want to sit here and hold forever. So you lean in, and then we come out of it and swap the feet up, and we do the same thing. On that last rep here, you do five to each side, and on that last rep you just straighten yourself out, come down. Now we’ve got to work on that spine a little bit. So in this position here we’re going to roll our body.

Leave the leg trailing back there and keep your arms reached up overhead so we’re working on our thoracic extension. That middle of the spine, getting it to be able to lean back more here. Let gravity help you. Then you come down and you roll yourself to the opposite side. You’re also getting some good mobility here through your lumbar spine, feeling nice and loose, and of course, stretching that top hip.

Just like that. You keep alternating five and five to each side there. Then on that last rep there you come into this position here. You sit up, put your hands back, open up your chest, get your shoulders and your chest stretched out here into this reverse table. When you get up here, drive up, activate your glutes, reach, push through here, reach across your body, and go as far as you can.

So now we’re getting a stretch on the hip flexor, on this leg mostly. You’re getting compression through this shoulder joint, which is good for activating the muscles inside that, and stabilizes your shoulder, and of course you’re getting more of that thoracic extension here, and rotation. That way. You come down, alternate, open, reach. Push as hard as you can through your glutes to activate them.

Alternate for five on each side. Then we stand up. Here’s the flow. It keeps going. We stand up and go now to the three way lunge.

We step out here, lunge, reach back. Now we’re stretching out the hip flexor on this side, but we’re also getting glute activation on the front leg. Reach, don’t hang out here too long. Three way lunge, we’re going to go now to 45 degrees. Step, and lean back toward the planted leg.

Now we’re getting a little bit of a groin stretch at this oblique angle here. We’re also getting the glute activation at this 45 degree angle. Then we step back, step straight to the side. Again, lean back in that direction, really stretching the adductors and groin on this leg. At the same time we’re opening up the ribcage on the right hand side and still having that glute activation.

Five times of the three way sequence on this leg, five times of the three way sequence on that side. Now it gets ugly. The hamstring pulses. Nobody stretches their hamstrings right. You have to be in an anterior pelvic tilt if you want to stretch your hamstrings.

Meaning your pelvis has to be in this position, not that position. If you’re doing anything out of this position it’s not really a hamstring stretch. It’s not really putting the stretch where it needs to be. So what you need to do is get into this position, you lunge out, get into the anterior tilt. Get your back arched.

Drop straight down from here. Almost like a sprinter position here. Now you drive back with the knee. I didn’t cave in. I left it in this position here.

I’m just dropping down and I’m driving my knee back. These are the pulses. One. Kills. Two.

It’s hard to get it all the way straight because you’re already using up hamstring length by having your leg in front of you, and now, of course, we have the pelvis in the right position. So it’s really difficult, but you want to try to pulse, and get that leg back, as straight as you possibly can. Five times on each leg. Then we do straighten the leg here. Let the leg stay locked out, get into the anterior tilt, and now we do five reaches.

The reaches start here. Reach forward as if you were trying to push somebody away from you. Right here. You’ll probably run out of room pretty quick, especially if you don’t allow your knee to buckle. So right here, reach, and back.

Reach, and back. Reach. You do that five times on each leg. Then we’ve got to work on finishing this off, getting the upper body a little bit loose. So now we do something called a can opener.

What the can opener is, if you look at the lower body first you loosen up your hips, you’re making a mobile rotation, rotation. Internal, external. And your arms are just following along for the ride. But now, once you’re ready, pretend you’re throwing with your right arm. It’s up here, and then down, across your body.

It’s up, and it’s down across your body. So now you’re getting this dynamic stretch here of the posterior shoulder, and rotator cuff on the way down, and then you’re opening it up, and you’re opening up the chest on the way back. The other arm just goes along for the ride. It travels more across the body, this way. All the way up, chop down.

10 this direction, and then 10 the other direction. Then we want to get those shoulders – right before we’re about to use them – we’ve had a lot of compression. Let’s get them to feel nice, and loose again. We can do that by just letting gravity help us. These are dead shoulder circles.

So you’re letting your arm hang as dead as it can be. Don’t hold on tight. Try to let it hang as dead as it could be and you try to make big circles. Your fingers won’t touch the floor here if you’re at the right height, but you should reach for the floor. Let them almost feel like they can scrape the floor each time.

Do nice, 10, big circles, feeling as if your shoulders are pulling down a little bit, getting a little bit of distraction, and loosening up the shoulder joint. 10, and then 10, the other arm. Then finally, we have ankle breakers because all of this starts from the ground up. You