Stretching

Originally published on Cohost as a response to an ask, “What’s your stretching routine, if you don’t mind me asking?”.

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Great question! TL;DR: deep lunges ~8min each as the main focus, with {side splits, wide stance bend-over, cross-legged bend-over, calf stretches, single-leg reaches} for ~2min each if I’m feeling up for more. If those words don’t mean anything to you, keep reading! I made diagrams!

¹ My routine is very cobbled-together and unscientific. I took most of my inspiration from when my sister (who does ballet) led me through a shortened version of her routine. From that, I took mostly the ones I could do without much warmup and added in a few from sports practices. The end result is something targeted specifically to address imbalances from too much running and sitting. I haven’t made much progress in flexibility in a while so ymmv, but I can touch my toes so it’ll prob get u there at the very least.

Do note, however, that because of the nature of the things I want to stretch, these are all lower-body ones, no upper-body. So if you’re looking for that, sorry, I need to figure out a better routine myself before giving any advice.

General Stretching Advice

Like with any physical activity, stretching is a conversation with your body! It is important to really pay attention to how things feel and back off if things start to hurt in bad ways. It is also important to learn to distinguish between “good hurting” and “bad hurting”. It’s hard for me to describe beyond that through text, sort of a “you know it when you feel it” sort of thing. “Good hurting” is like the soreness you get from a deep stretch or workout, “bad hurting” is when you injure yourself doing those things. It’s sometimes a fine line in terms of what activities will cause what sensation, especially when pushing your limits, but the sensations themselves are very distinct I promise!!

Deep Lunges

Before getting into the rest of the stretches, I should probably explain something about the images I’ve included. In green, I’ve highlighted parts of my body that should be feeling the stretch, and in red, I’ve highlighted parts that should not be the focus of the stretch. In this case, we see that the hip flexors and upper hamstring/lower glute are the focus. The goal is eventually to get your elbows on the ground, but you should not be twisting or rounding your back too much in order to do so². I’ve also included arrows on the “direction” of the stretch, that is, what part of your body should be moving lower in order to make the stretch deeper. In this case, getting your hips closer to the ground is the goal.

These are my favorite stretch and I just love how my legs feel afterwards. I do it for the longest because the position is fairly stable, and I can really feel the muscles open up as time goes on. Something about the upper hamstring and especially the opening of the hip flexor just feels really nice… and boy howdy do my hip flexors need it from sitting all day³.

Side Splits

I started doing this on a whim and I’ve actually seen the most improvement here! I’ve been able to move my feet a solid couple inches farther than when I started. These can be potentially dangerous because your full bodyweight is on the tendons in a way that is hard to back out of without activating those same tendons, creating a risk for tears. I always use my hands to push myself up first, and then slowly shuffle my feet together until I’m out of the stretch.

Wide Stance Bend-Over

a.k.a “The Jack-O Crouch”. As you can see pictured, I am not nearly as flexible as that character, but this is a good stretch regardless. The focus should definitely be on keeping your back flat throughout. The goal is to stretch your hamstrings here, not your upper back (a bit of lower back stretch is unavoidable). The mental image should be rotating your hips. If you’re like me, and your hips aren’t very flexible, you might be surprised at how little they can rotate! This is ok, and means you have lots of room for improvement. My eventual goal is go below 90 degrees but oh boy my sitting legs r not up 2 task; my lower hamstrings are very tight.

Cross-Legged Bend-Over

Variant of the previous stretch, targeting a different part of your hamstring than before. I’m not entirely sure myself if the stretch is more on the front crossed leg or the back, both are stretched, alternating between is probably fine. Remember to still keep your back flat! I usually don’t go as low on these compared to the wide stance ones.

Calf Stretches

I got a mean calf cramp once, so this made it into my routine. I also usually combine these with a standing lunge (in cyan) to target hip flexors again, since they’re basically the same foot position just with different hip rotations. The other cyan is an option to stretch the front of your opposite foot. Make sure to do these in shoes or on a sticky exercise mat so your feet don’t slip!

Single-Leg Reaches

A classic, I think everyone had to do this in middle school for fitness tests or something?? Anyways this was the one fitness test i failed (: and I’m still working on it to this day. I usually do these flat with one leg butterfly-ed (as shown in this image that I drew previously).

Other Stretches That Are Nice

… but I didn’t have room to include since I don’t do them too regularly and this post is as long enough as it is:

• Butterfly
• Single-Leg Quad
• Single-Leg Sits
• World’s Greatest
• Front Split Reaches And more upper body ones that, again, I’m neglecting to mention.

That’s about it, now, go stretch!! & drink some water, it’ll make u feel better!! Physicality affecting emotions is real, and stretching is a good meditative/mindfulness thing, for me at least. thank u for allowing me 2 share my niche interest :)

Footnotes

1. I’ll be honest: I did forget about this eventually. I had the draft, I had the photos, main hurdle was actually setting aside chunks of time to draw over the pictures and edit the draft. I forgot about it in the meantime multiple times. Sorry for the big delay on this, I’ll try to be faster in responding to asks in the future! Asks are always open after all, and more asks about physical activities are always appreciated! ↩

2. A little is fine, since that can change the stretch on your legs in ways that can help, but again, backs are not something that needs too much stretching. ↩

3. Stretching theory time! If your lower back hurts from too much sitting, that tends to be a problem with your hip flexors being too tight, rotating your pelvis forward. So, my first stretch targets this hip flexibility a lot, and I throw in lower hamstring flexibility as other stretches to round things out. ↩