Finishing Your Stretching Routine

Margie Weiss: My name is Margie Weiss and this is general stretching. At the end of a workout, where we stretch our whole body, I would like to do three basic exercises. They are really good, if you want to use them at home as well, because they are very simple and yet they really help to make your body feel really lose. You are going to take first, your hands behind you, you are going to breathe in and arch your chest as high as you can get up, and drop your shoulders. Arms just straight in the back and your hands are clasped. You are going to then left the arms as high as you can. What you are stretching here is through the pectorals muscles in the chest and your breathe it in and you fill up the lungs as you do this and you really feel, nice expansion in the chest, its really great for your posture. As you come down we will do just the opposite. We are going to bring the hands up the front, shoulders are going to be high, head is going to be low, push forwards. Now, you are going to hollow your back and it really stretches all the way through your back, almost like a cat stretching in the morning.

Breathing out, and dropping the shoulders and letting the head go down. As you come on back up, the final thing that most people tend not to stretch, you can do this in the job place, after you are working on the computer, is to stretch the neck. So, you are going to take one hand, gentle pressure only, you are going tip towards the ear. The opposite shoulder relaxes downwards. Holding this about 20 seconds like you do for most stretches and may be a little bit more, depending on when you feel the release of the muscle, gentle pressure only here with the hand.

You got to do the other side, so you breathe in, breathe out and release dropping that opposite shoulder, and letting the ear go right down towards the shoulder. Coming back to center, body is nice and flat, we got one more and thats forwards, gentle pressure only here too, hand to the head, gently tip the chin in towards the neck. Breathe out and drop the shoulders as you do it. When you rise, let the hand come down, you are going to roll your shoulders once backwards, big motion and then do it the opposite direction from the back to the front and down.

One final thing when you are doing at stretching class, one hand forwards, other hand forwards and you give yourself a hand for doing stretching, because its really good for your body.