How to Beat Stiffness in Less Than 10 Minutes

1. Introduction: we all get those aches and pains from sitting at our desk. If you ask me. As a species, we spend far too much time sitting. I've come up with a routine that allows me to alleviate all of those aches and pains within 10 minutes. Instead of telling you all of the bits and pieces that go into this routine, I'll just show you part of it right now. Sitting at your desk, stretch your hands out to the side, lock one arm underneath the other with the palms facing in. Stretch across your back and drop your head towards your biceps. You should feel the stretch across all of your back. It should feel very relieving and should never feel uncomfortable. If that stretch has done you good right now, then perhaps you should join this video course and learn how to perform a full range of these stretches to relieve the pain in your neck, your back, your hips and around your face. 2. Stretch Routine Upper Body: begin by sitting comfortably. Turn your head gently from side to side. Take your thumbs, insert them into your armpits and lower your shoulders through your back. Extend your arms to the side and bring them over your head. Feel them stretch up through your back and release. Interlace your fingers and bring your hands forwards stretching at the elbows. Bring your arms overhead. Allow your elbows to flex very slightly and drop your shoulders into your back. You can also extend your elbows and lean to the side whilst looking in the opposite direction. Drop your hands, interlace your fingers behind your back and rest them on your chairs back. Lower your head. Drop it towards your chest. Feel your back stretch, then release and look up stretching the front of your body. Repeat whilst stretching down and look up one last time. Face forwards. Sit neutrally. Take your arms to the sides. Place one hand underneath the other one and try to make your palms touch. If they don't touch, leave them open as they are here. As you hold this position, lower your head down into your biceps, feeling the stretch through your back. Come back to neutral. Stretch your arms out and take the other hand underneath the other arm. Perform the same action by dropping your head slowly and gently into your biceps and release. Release the arms. Stretch one hand out to the side and use the other hand to gently and very carefully. Stretch your neck on one side by pulling your head over to the opposite side off the outstretched arm. Change positions and do the same for the other side of your neck. Be very careful here. Come back to neutral and release. Interlace your fingers and stretch upwards one more time. Place your arms in your lap and sit up straight. 3. Stretch Routine Legs and Feet: Let's stretch out the lower half of our body. Start by sitting comfortably on your chair. Put your feet out to the sides just a bit past shoulder width and stretch down trying to place your palms on the floor in front of you. Feel the stretch as you hang down towards the floor. Slowly rise up once you're done, then take your left leg and place it on your knee as you can see in the image and stretch your body down towards that leg whilst keeping the knee locked in place using your arm. Then change legs and do the same on the other side for at least 10 seconds. Really feel the stretch going through your leg and release. Now move your chair back straight in your leg and lifted up to hip height. If you can pale your toes back so you create a stretch through your calf muscle. Perform the same on the other side. If you can't get your leg all the way up, that's fine. That will come with time. It's more important that you feel a stretch in your calf. Grab a tennis ball, golf ball or any kind of ball or bottle, place it on the floor and roll the arches of your feet over the ball. Feel the areas where you have a tight muscle or tendon and press them gently to relieve the pressure. Do this on both feet. You could do this whilst you're working, and once you feel no more pressure, you can release. 4. Active Facial Release: Let's do some active release on our face and neck muscles. Sometimes your muscles get bunched up and knotted, and we need to release these knots by using pressure from our fingers. Tilt your head over to one side and feel for these tight areas with the tip of your fingers . Once you feel a tight area, press on it gently and move it around. Keep holding that area until it feels like it releases from under your finger. If it helps, you can move your shoulder and your neck. Around here. I'm during the two sides off my neck that extend from just behind my ear. Two. Underneath my shoulder blade, feel along all of these sections of muscle and tendon for the very sensitive areas that are likely bunched up and causing you pain somewhere else. Down your muscle chain again. Press and hold until it releases. You can perform the same technique on your cheek muscles because we use our mouths a lot. These muscles typically get overused through the course of a day. Press find and hold those tight muscles that sit over your cheekbones and jaw bones. You shouldn't feel a lot of pain just a slight tingling sensation. When you do this press and hold for about 5 to 10 seconds. A particularly sensitive one is just below the ear and just behind the jawbone just in there, there is a muscle that gets knotted quite frequently. Press and hold. Don't forget to try it on the other side as well. This should release a lot of tension in your face and your neck. Sometimes you will feel this. When you hold going up over the top of your head and even down to your neck and back, loosen up your jaw, twist your head gently from side to side and feel the release. Now let's talk about the rear off the neck. Massage the muscles that extend from your skull down to your back across to your shoulders . Again, feel for the tight bands of muscle and gently massaged them with your fingers. When you get to a lumpy section, press down with your fingers until the lump subsides. Loosen your shoulders and move around your head and neck should now feel great