5 Muscles You’re TOTALLY Forgetting to Stretch (BIG MISTAKE!)

While we should all be stretching, there are likely 5 muscles that you totally forgot to stretch and that’s a big mistake. In this video, I am going to show you 5 of the most overlooked muscles when it comes to stretching, the best way to stretch them, and when you should be addressing them during t

So, let’s face it, you don’t have all day to  work out, and I get it. However, are you just working out and forgetting to do maybe some of the  other things that are going to make your body feel better, namely stretching? Well, today I’m going  to show you five stretches that you’re forgetting to do completely, and your body’s paying the price  for it. I’m going to show you not only what to do, but when the best time to do them is let’s  start breaking them down one by one. All right, so in order to help you out, I’m going  to need you to do two things for me.

First thing is, pull up a chair and then take a seat. And not  only are we going to sit here and actually learn what we need to do to fix these muscle tightness,  but we’re actually going to do the first stretch. And the first muscle that I want you to target  that you’re forgetting right now is called the peroneal muscles. And it’s a muscle group actually  on the outside of our lower leg. And probably if you just run your hand up and over this area  here, you might feel that it gets kind of painful.

Oftentimes, this muscle can get tight, people with  flat feet, because as their arches collapsed down, this muscle becomes shorter and shorter. So how do we target this? All you got to do from the sitting position is take the soles  of your feet and put them flat together, which is going to require you to roll them out. And from this position here, we’ve got a good stretch because those muscles wrap under the  foot. Now I want to use our hands on the seat and just try to stand up as much as we can, bring  our knees together.

You’re going to be limited by the tightness in this muscle and you’ll feel it  here. And that’s what you want that good stretch for about a minute to a minute and a half. Now,  you can do this at any time of the day. You can do it at night, as I recommend most static stretches,  or you can simply do it during the day because it’s going to make you feel better. Just make sure  you stop forgetting this muscle altogether.

The second muscle you’re forgetting all  about, I really can’t blame you because you can’t even see it. It’s not only one of those  out of sight, out of my muscles, but it’s actually one you can’t even touch. And we’re talking about  the subscapularis because it’s actually underneath this shoulder blade. You can see it’s the one  that runs right up under here and you can’t even palpate it even if you wanted to. But it  doesn’t mean that it’s not doing its damage by becoming tight and we need to do something about  it.

And how do we do that? With one of these, just a regular broom, a mop or anything, a  PVC pipe that you could use as a dowel. And all you have to do is just throw it over  your shoulder like this, as if you’re carrying a jacket. You line it up with the middle of your  bicep, and then you reach in front and grab the broomstick from the front side. And then you open  your chest up nice and wide and start to pull up on that stick.

And what this is doing is  you can see it’s getting external rotation at the shoulder. That subscapularis muscle is  ironically one of the rotator cuff muscles, but it’s the only one that internally  rotates the shoulder of the four. You obviously have a lot more inter rotation  going on with other muscles too, so you want to make sure you’re doing your best to increase  your range of motion into external rotation. This stretch is one that you can do any time during  the day. Hold it for 45 to 60 seconds.

Make sure you work both sides, and I promise the shoulder of  yours is going to feel a hell of a lot better. I think we all can agree that we’ve become pretty  imbalanced people, at least pastorally. We lost the war against gravity a long time ago because  we’ve let those anterior chain muscles pull us down and forward without doing enough work for  those posterior chain muscles to create that balance so that we need. However, it’s actually  one of those anterior chain muscles that we never even focus our attention on that’s doing a lot  of the damage. And the easiest way to fix that is with one of these.

Yes, there’s actually  still a use for a physio ball. And the muscle we’re talking about is the rectus abdominals,  the abs. The function of which is to pull your ribcage closer to your pelvis. It also tends  to round out the upper back contributing to this poor posture that we have. But we can stretch it with this physio ball simply by allowing ourselves to contour over the  ball.

And you do that first by dropping your hips down, allowing them to drop over the front side  of the ball and pull those arms up over your head. And what this is doing is creating that  separation that we’re looking for between the lower ribs here and your pelvis. That’s going to  place a really nice stretch on the abs, 45 to 60 seconds at a time, 2 to 3 times a day, especially  if you’re demonstrating either that rounded shoulder posture or if you just sit a lot. The fourth muscle you’re forgetting all about is another one of those out of sight, out  of mind, or actually out of touch muscles, because this one is really, really deep and we’re  talking about the QL or the Quadratus lumborum. You can see that it’s the muscle that attaches  here to your pelvis and then to the vertebrae in your lumbar spine.

And what it does is it  hikes the hip up from one side or the other. We oftentimes don’t even sit right, right. We’re  doing too much sitting as it is, but we don’t even sit properly because we usually choose one cheek  over the other. And what happens there is when you do it, you get that lateral shift and then that  hip will get higher and shorten this muscle. So, what are we supposed to do about it?

Well, we’ve  got to stretch it. And the best way to do this is what we call a QL slide, you get to this all  fours position, you’re going to slide one leg back just like that, allow it to drop down to the  ground so that the outside of your hip hits the ground. And you can see that muscle is actually  being targeted nicely here, stretching from the top of that pelvis and through that lumbar spine,  getting some of the lateral flexion that drops the hip down, but also allowing you to post off of  this arm over here to intensify the stretch. And again, we hold this for about a minute or a  minute and a half, making sure we do both sides. Not only will you start to feel looser in this  area, but for those of you that have a lot of back pain that’s unexplainable, this is oftentimes  the cause.

Start working this in and I promise you you’re going to feel a lot better. And that brings  us to muscle group number five and maybe it’s actually one you even try to stretch and we’re  talking about the lats. And if this is what you’re doing to stretch it, can I ask you to consider  something different? I actually made an entire video on how to stretch the last and it’s actually  going to help you to stretch that QL at the same time, you can watch that right here. And if you haven’t done so, guys, make sure your click Subscribe to turn on  your Notifications, so you never miss a video when we put one out.

If you’re looking  for a complete step-by-step program, we have them all available over at Athleanx. com. All right, guys, I’ll see you soon.