10-Minute Total Body Stretch 2

Hi, I'm Leah Zahner. I'm here with a G H U T V and I'm gonna bring you a 10 minute full body stretch. So whether you're cooling down from a workout, you just did. Maybe it's a run. Maybe it's another video, or you just have 10 minutes in your day that you wanna treat yourself to 10 minutes of stretching. This is something I hope you give a try and come back to time and time again. We're gonna start standing up. If you like to work with a mat go ahead and grab one right now. I'm gonna start my timer and plant my feet. As you stand up you're gonna bring your feet wider than your hips. Turn your toes out slightly. Your knees should always be able to track right over your toes. So you never should feel like you have to really rotate out just where it's comfortable for you. And start with your arms out to the side. You're going to lean over with your upper body. Reach your left arm up towards the right side. We're gonna pause here before tracing a circle with your fingertips as you bend your knees, drop down into the center to switch and come up the way you came on the other side, pause. You're gonna feel a stretch down the side of your torso and then lift up. We're gonna do one more slow like this reach up and over. Use the pause to make sure your hips are centered and the stretches truly down the side of your torso before bending your knees, sink down, switch at the bottom come up and hit the same pause on the second side. Maybe even take your gaze up high. So your chest is open and the stretch sits right here. Now we're gonna do that two more times a little faster and a little smoother. Take your bend. Bend your knees. Come through center, sweep up hit your stretch, but don't pause go right into one more circle over bend and drop lift, circle all the way over this time. We're gonna bring both hands down to the floor. One hand on either side of your right foot, set your back knee down and relax your foot behind you. Lift your chest and take your hands to the top of your thigh. Keep your shoulders rolled back and down. Your chest should stay lifted. You want all of the focus to be sinking down through your hips, towards the floor. It's gonna give you a nice open, a nice stretch through your hip flexor. It's not gonna bring any tension into your upper body. Take one deep breath in and an exhale. Let it all out. Take your hands back down to the floor. Now you're gonna curl your toes under, pike your hips up. We're gonna take some time to do some adjustments here. So a lot of times it's really natural to open your hips to this side and what you want to do is keep them facing forward. Now this might mean your back heel lifts a little bit. This might mean maybe you take your hands to your front leg and bend the knee slightly so that you can still feel a stretch but you're not all the way down hands on the carpet. So think about your hands down. If you're there, join me, flatten your palms as much as possible and to deepen the stretch your hips rotate forward and your back heel presses down. This is a deep, deep, deep stretch for your back calf and a lot down the back of your front leg as well. As you're here take a breath in shoulder blades roll up and back, chest goes forward sink a little bit lower on your exhale. And then you're gonna bend your front knee and sink right back down into your lunge position. Set your knee back down to where it was before. Instead of lifting your chest, you're gonna freeze this foot, freeze your back knee they do not move. Just shift your weight back. So you're gonna sit back and flex your front foot. This is gonna be a hamstring stretch only. Now if you shift your knee, this knee back or forward you're gonna lose this stretch whenever you shift your weight back. So you wanna keep your chest leaning forward almost like when we were standing up but this is almost entirely focused on the front leg right down the hamstring, and then lift yourself forward. Find your lunge again. This time instead of hands on the thighs, you're just gonna keep your fingertips down and gaze in front. Plant your palms, curl your toes under, lift up. You're gonna pike your hips up, but this time just so that you can rotate everything into the center. Find that nice wide stance while you're hanging out here. Toes are pointed slightly out. This time just relax your head, neck and shoulders. You can grab opposite elbows if you'd like, you can keep your palms on the floor. You can even reach your hands back behind you and use your fingertips to pull you a little bit deeper into a stretch. We're gonna repeat all of this one more time on the second side. So come back into the center, hands to your thighs soft bend in your knees and you're gonna roll yourself up. Ready to start the second side. Arms go wide, right away we're gonna go into the smooth circles. Hold, drop through center, lift, little stretch open, over to the side, drop through, release your low back. Come over to the side. Open two more. Find your stretch. Find the bend in your knees, lift to this side and open. Now I haven't danced in a while, but you might notice that my hands go right into ballet class kind of mode. You don't have to do that or if you wanna pretend you're in dance class, go ahead and do it. This is our big circle over to the other side for the lunge. So once you're here, you're gonna set your knee right above your ankle just like you did on the first side drop your back knee and relax your foot. Hands start on your thigh, roll your shoulders down, lift your chest, press slightly away. Every time you lift your upper body, you're deepening the stretch in your hip flexor. So if all you have is this, if this is what feels best for you, you stop right here. But if you wanna deepen the stretch that's your press up anyway. Take a deep breath in and your exhale hands come back down to the floor in front of you. Curl your back toes under and pike your hips up. Your goal is to have your feet planted just like the first side. Find whatever modification worked the best for you and then work on rotating your hips forward. That rotation forward should really deepen the stretch down the calf muscle in your back leg and you should feel a stretch down the hamstring of your front leg. As you settle in, every inhale think about lifting and opening your chest every exhale, hinge a little further forward and roll your shoulder blades down. Take one more big breath here and your exhale. You're gonna gently come back down into the lunge position. You're gonna find that same lunge position that you started but again, instead of hands to the thigh, you're just gonna shift your weight back. Nothing moved, my front foot didn't move, my back knee didn't move. I'm just flexing through my toes so that I can lift my chest and hinge forward. This time deepening the stretch for the hamstring on my front leg. I got one more big breath here, big exhale. And then you're gonna rock yourself forward back into your lunge. Lift your upper body just slightly this time. This is a little bit more relaxed of a stretch. Not quite as deep and intense as with the hands on top of your near thigh. And then you're gonna come back down to plant in your hands, curl your toes under, lift your hips. Just gently walk yourself in to the center. Now we're gonna change this one. You're gonna walk your feet in soft bend in your knees as much as you need to, let yourself hang forward again as much bending your knees as you need it might be a pretty deep bend. It might be all the way straight. It totally depends on your own flexibility. There is no right or wrong hands come down you're gonna gently come down to knee. Want you to send your arms in front of you. As you reach forward and drop your chest to the floor, you wanna keep your hips stacked right over top of your knees. So some people will go right into a child's pose here. This is actually a chest opener. As you reach forward and lower your chest down you need your hips to be high because that's what's gonna give you that extra stretch through the front side of your upper body. Do you think your, think your way back in towards your heels you're gonna get a little bit more stretch lengthening through your spine. Go and walk your hands back. You're gonna bring yourself to a seated position. Bring your feet in front of you however feels comfortable. And we're gonna spend the last few minutes going through a different way that I choose to get into pigeon pose or a figure four, whatever you call it. Some of us have a lot of trouble with that. I'm one of them, right. My hips aren't quite as open. So I like to start in this position here on the floor feet are in front, I'm gonna take my left leg and just swing it out to my side. About 90 degrees out here. It doesn't really matter. The important part is the front leg. You're gonna work your front leg to a 90 degree bend no deeper of a bend, no less of a bend. Really go for 90 degrees. Now for some of us and this was my starting point this is it. This is where we're gonna live right here. But join me and stop at whatever point feels like the best stretch for you without pushing it too far. I'm gonna take one hand and brace it against my knee. The other hand is gonna brace against my shoe or if you're working barefoot you can take your hand against your foot. You're using your arms to keep your front leg in place. And then I'm just gonna work my back leg, back and back and back. Use the foot, use the ankle. And as I get my leg further behind me, I start to feel, Oh I can rotate my hips forward. That's what I'm going for. And that's when I feel a deep stretch on the outside part of my hip on this front right leg. Ooh it feels nice. If you're here, it's feeling good and you wanna deepen your stretch. You're gonna bend your elbows, lower your chest down towards your front leg and start to reach your arms forward. Now, again, you're only coming as far with me as feels best for you. Some of you might even be laying down with your upper body right now because it feels amazing. I'm not gonna join you in that because the second I do that, I lose my positioning. So at any point, if you go so far that you have to fall out of the position, you've gone a little bit. You've pushed a little too far past your edge. So we're gonna take one more deep breath here and then we're gonna come up the way we came. Exhale, you're gonna walk your hands up if you're lower down, if not you're just gonna release this back foot. You're gonna sit up tall and you're gonna sweep the legs in front of you. We're gonna do that on the second side. So you're gonna bring your leg back out to the side, 90 degree bend in the front leg use your hands to brace your knee and your foot right in place. And then start wiggling this back leg into position. Now you might find one side is gonna feel really, really good. The other side it's gonna feel not so great. Don't be worried about it. We all have differences side to side. This is gonna expose it a little bit but then you'll know what side you wanna really work on. So this side is a little bit more difficult for me to keep my knee flat to the floor. So I'm gonna walk forward but only just a little bit on this side. I can still feel that beautiful stretch through my outer hip area. I'm still completely in control. I'm gonna take one more deep breath right here. Nice, big exhale and roll back up. Come back the way you came you wanna release your back leg, bring everything forward. You can sit cross-legged however feels best for you just take one more big inhale, on your exhale roll your shoulders back. That's it. Full body stretch enjoy the rest of whatever your day has.