90% People Become Flexible With These 5 Stretches!

If you are someone who isn’t flexible, but would like to see the benefits of stretching, then you’ve come to the right place. In this video, I am going to show you 5 stretches for people who aren’t flexible. This stretching routine is easy for anyone to start doing today to improve their flexibility

What’s up, guys? Jeff Cavalere, athletics. com. So, you know, you need to stretch, but the stretches that you have as options right now seem somewhat limiting because you can’t even get into position to do them. Well, I’m going to show you here today five stretches that literally everybody can start with to start to improve their flexibility and then you can take off from there.

And all you’re going to need is a door and a floor. So, the first exercise, let’s just pretend as you’re walking into your bathroom in the morning, don’t go all the way in. Stop halfway. Put one foot through the door. Okay?

Then what you’re going to do is leave the other one outside. Take your hands, put them up against the door frame. Try to reach up as far as you can. Now the idea is to slide your body through at the same time try to get your chest into the door. Right?

So I’m sliding through. Get my chest through the door. If you do this right, you’re going to feel this in a lot of different areas. The first thing is the hip flexor on the leg that’s outside of the door. So you should feel a stretch right up in through here.

The second thing is through the upper back. There’s an area of the spine we call the thoracic spine, which I believe is the most important area of the spine to maintain our mobility. You’re going to get a good extension and lengthening through there because your arms are up here against the door frame. The third thing is because the arms are up, you’re going to feel a good stretch in your shoulder joints, especially if you’ve been sleeping all night with your arms down here at your side, it’s going to feel really good. So, all I want you to do is just lean through.

Try to keep your chest through the door, head up, hold it for about 30 seconds or so. And of course you switch through. Other leg comes in. Drop it back. The hip flexor stretch now shifts to that side.

And then again you reach and hold. Now this is where it gets interesting because the same exercise done from a different position. Now this time down on your knee is going to have a different effect. Okay. Now what you’re looking to do is still have one foot through the door.

That leg is still here down on the ground. But when I do this from a lunging position, I start to feel it even more through that hip flexor. And now a little bit more into the quad. So what you do is you get yourself into that position where you slide through, but this time instead of having your arms up overhead, this is something we call the kneeling door splat. Now you take your hands right about at chest level and you lean through that way.

And what’s happening now is you’re getting something called an external rotation stretch on your shoulders. So now you should start to feel it in through here, right? And you’ll get that really good feeling. You’re trying to pinch your shoulder blades together. Now you’ve got more hip flexion.

So you’re getting deeper into your hips. So if you have any restrictions and tight hips, you’re going to feel it here, too. So again, same concept, completely different feel than what you had before. Again, 30 seconds on one leg. Switch it up.

Same thing. Slide through. Get those elbows in that position. Down. Right.

Keep the elbows pointed down towards the ground. Shift through and feel that good stretch. That’s two of your five. However, there’s still more to do. And like I said, you only need a door or in this case the floor.

So the third thing here is a hamstring hinge and reach. And I say hinge because it’s very important that you learn how to hinge. The hinge is going to happen all the hip joint. Okay? It’s not bending.

I don’t want you to bend. When you bend and try to stretch your hamstrings out, what happens is you get a posterior tilt of the pelvis, which takes away all the stretch. To get a good hamstring stretch, you have to be what we call anterior pelvic tilt. So, the easiest way to do that if you’re a beginner is to spread the feet out and take away some of the requirement of hamstring flexibility because again, you’re likely not at a point where you have a lot of hamstring flexibility, which is fine. That’s why we’re doing this with me right now.

So, you start with the feet apart like this. Then, put your hands right up here on the inside of your upper thighs. And all I’m going to do is push myself backwards. Right? This is the hinge.

Push straight back as far as I can possibly go. Once I’ve used up all space here, you’re gonna feel a stretch in two places. Number one, you’re gonna feel it on the back of your hamstrings. Again, your goal is to try to keep your knees as straight as possible. Just from this position here, if I had the ability to reach, then what I would do next is maintaining this position and maintain this flat low back here, just reach down to the ground if I could.

All right? Just like I’m getting ready to hike a football if I could. And if you can’t do it right now, you’re perfectly fine staying right here. But I go down to the ground like that. If I’ve got that, then I can reach down with the other arm.

All right. And I just try try to keep that hinge back, keep the low back somewhat arched, and just keep my hands in contact with the ground. You’re going to feel it again all through the hamstrings and through the groin a little bit. Okay. Great way to stretch your hamstrings as a beginner.

And this wide base of support with your legs is going to make it feel more stable. That’s number three. Number four, something we call the thoracic reach through. So now I talked about that middle upper back, the thoracic area where we need to get more mobility. It’s not just into extension, but it’s through rotation because this is where we get all of our functional rotation.

So what I want you to do is come down to the ground on your forearms and on your knees. So sort of in this basic all fours position. And then you take one forearm. You’re going to slide it behind that elbow and then try to land on the back of your shoulder. Okay?

So from this position here, I’m going to take this arm, put it behind that elbow, land onto the back of my shoulder. I just want to lay down on the floor. Lay on the back of the shoulder here. Just like that. And feel the stretch.

You’ll see the rotation now through the upper back. And you’ll also feel a really good stretch through that posterior shoulder. And I want you to do this for about 30 seconds. So again, what you’re stretching is that upper back and getting rotation and you’re also getting a stretch on this posterior deltoid that tends to get very tight on people. So once I’m in here, I’m just reaching in this direction.

Again, rest my head down. This is a very relaxing position. 30 seconds. Come back to the top. Take it back through this side.

Lean until I can get all the way down to the ground. Lay on the back of the shoulder here. Just like that. And feel the stretch. And then the last move, you get a chance to work on a little bit more of that deep hip flexion.

Because as you get older and as you get more arthritic, what’s going to go is your ability to flex through the hip joint and rotate through the hip joint. So this time now, I want you to open the feet up a little bit and then slide yourself back as far as you can. Sit back for however much motion you are allowed, what your body’s giving you right now. From here, I’m gonna extend my arms up and try to just let my forehead rest on the ground just like this. This is somewhat of a child’s pose position if my arms were back.

But what we do is we sweep through the position. So when I’m here, I’m going