Full Body Strength Cool Down Using the True Stretch
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What’s happening coaches, athletes. Michael Hughes here at Gymnazo Edu, you asked for it, and now you’re going to get it, I’m gonna dive into this true stretch behind me for awhile, I don’t know, maybe the third time or so, because this is the one tool honestly, that I actually told my clients back in the day, early 2000s that they shouldn’t use. Because it wasn’t that beneficial. I was definitely wrong on that one. So start on my past clients who train with me at Bally Total Fitness back in Well, early to 2000s. Today, we have 19 True stretches that we use for every small group class cool down, warm up, restoration, movement, therapeutics, etc, etc. It’s a tool that provides us a very unique ability to position specific movement patterns, and drive different body parts and authentic angulations that actually would be very challenging for an athlete to dial in for just their body or traditional tools, our bodies so most multifaceted with different aspects. So we can use any advantage we can, well, we’re going to use it. In fact, if I had more room in my facility, I buy even more, even more of these things. So if you own we’re actually have access to a true stretch that give me a thumbs up in the comments below. Because honestly, it’s kind of a bit of a following, in a sense. Well, in this video, I’m going to cover how to directly mobilize the quads, the adductors, the hamstrings, the glutes, the chest and the lats. These muscles are heavy hitters in any strength based workout. So feel free to mix and match for the body or specific muscles that you want. And let me know in the comments, if you want me to hit other aspects, because there’s so many different ways to stretch these muscles than just what’s maybe on the little kind of the front screen, or the little panel, we actually removed them off artery stretches because they don’t really show too much any case, let’s get into it. And as I do, please hit the like button, and consider subscribing to this channel. If you want to learn more about how to apply movement training to your business. This is a culture that is spreading like wildfire in the fitness industry. Let’s kick it off with our first one and we’re gonna go after the quads. What I like to do to go after clause is grab something that’s a little light and kind of easy, soft for me to go on to. If you’ve watched a few of our other videos, you’ve seen this stretch, but and I want to start in a position of kneeling. In fact, let me just switch sides so you can get a better view from the side. So I want to put my money down at positioning is all about how it comes into right I got my knee down, I got my toe at a point of position on nice and tall and my ribcage. And I’m going to drive my knee into the pad and I use that pad for this reason I’m going to lift my ribcage up, I’m creating what we call active tension. I got both hands in a comfortable spot. And I want to kind of prop them. So I have this kind of pin backwards on nice and tall. I’m ready for my quads to be lengthened. Now from here, it’s all about what I do, right. So the first thing I do is I take my knee and drive it forward my front knee that creates this hip extension. So I said go into that quad. If I go well enough, I’m actually going to start feeling into the hip flexor, even into the abdominals, which is not a bad thing whatsoever. And then as I feel that stretch, I want to go to about a seven, eight out of 10. And then from there, this is where I start to add all the different patterns, I’m going to use a hip drive or bass, I’m going to take my pelvis and drive it in different motion patterns for this video, and I’ll show you a few different ways you could kind of tweak it up. So I’m going to go side to side with that pattern. As I’m in the stretch, I’m feeling that quad shift, it’s stress, positive stress, left, right, I’m gonna rotate it also as well. And I would do at least a dozen repetitions slow steady. Or if not two dozen, you want to be stretching for at least about a minute, right, you want to get enough time for this tissue to open up and start to expand upon itself. Really important that you do that. Now again, I’m driving into different patterns to feel the different angulations of how each muscle works. Because muscles don’t run in perfect straight lines. Even if they do they can still be influenced in other planes of motion. Here’s a general concept that I’m going to be using today is I’m going to be going after the muscles dominant pattern with the quad is going to be extension of the hip. But as an extension of the hip, I’m going to play with the lateral positions and the rotational positions that my pelvis can also drive into facilitate greater lengthening of this muscle. So about a minute. Again, you can play longer, but it’s really about you should feel about when a muscle starts to fatigue when a position starts to fatigue. Just like if you’re going to be doing bunch of bicep curls right? At what rep count does that start to fatigue, that should be a good indicator that hey, you’re at that limit, kick it back switch sides. If you want to tweak this up if you want to take this to next level stuff in this base position, you can take your hand and lit Have it even grab onto the bars way ahead, even because that’s gonna pull more extension more ability to lift through the core. If you want to change the position, you can kneel down and see how my foot is back here. And I can get even more flexion of the knee, which has created a greater strain on that quad now don’t have to go as far as I can start to position myself, if you find yourself like just cranking away out and like I don’t feel a quad stretch whatsoever, more than likely your your hip is in too much of an anterior tilt. And that’s reducing the the amount of tension in that spot. So go to a posterior pelvic tilt, and then do that stretch. And I bet things will will change. That’s our first drill. Lovely, lovely stretch, to really open up through a lot of squats, a lot of lunges, the second one we’re going to be going after is going to be the adductors. Now for the abductors, this muscle is kind of one of those hidden heroes that we don’t spend a whole lot of time on. But it’s so integral into athletic movement, especially on strength leg days, where you don’t think of these adductors as strong muscles, but they are incredible, incredible stabilizers, and slight movers of the pelvis. So to hit him in a very easy way, we can basically put our foot on the base ground, throw our foot up, here, toe straight up, hands in front of us. And now from here, I simply just do a little bend and I just tilt in towards that leg, I don’t like to stretch with a lot knee. Because that lock knees kind of tells my body that I want it to be lengthened in a locked position. But we don’t really move with locked joints. So I’m going to keep a slight bend in it, as I tilt into this main pattern lateral, I’m going to drive my pelvis forward and backwards, again, a dozen to two dozen, if not more, to feel that muscle will start to get a fatigue and stretch away. And then I’m going to hold neutral and I’m going to rotate, and as I rotate, you’re gonna see my foot one to move with it because I’m putting extra rotation, or external rotation at this hip joint is really saying I am running out of room. So I keep my foot pinned, and I can even put my foot pinned on the back bar, I can actually kind of have a better chance of separating that connective tissue out and giving it some more elastic recoil as I start to move. Now the cool thing about just moving through the pelvis, it’s very simple. But I can also take my hands, reach down behind me reach up and behind me reach down, I can take either hand and reaching. And as I take a longer lever arm, it gives me more potential and more leverage to get me a better stretch. So again, when you’re talking about going after a stretch, sometimes it’s super basic, just to say, Wow, that’s tight enough, that’s all I have to do. And other times athletes out there is gosh, I need a little bit more leverage a little bit more mass and momentum to carry through these particular stretches, just know that there’s always a way to make this stretch a little bit more enhanced. Drop some questions in the comments below about what stretch you want me to tweak up on. And I’ll consider that for more and more videos are what about the hamstring. So let’s go over this one, this is where you want to face directly in, you’re gonna want to put your foot on either one of the secondary or what we call the top platform. And this is where this little hook allows you to grab onto the base of your shoe or your or your heel. And I want to put a little tension on that. So I’m going to drive my pelvis backwards, it’s going to start to straighten out my knee. But my since my heels locked into that it creates an extra tension, which is what I love, just like your heels going to be locked into the earth. From there, I want to rotate my pelvis forward and then really my chest follows. A lot of people get their nose to their knee, but they’re just rounding through the thoracic spine versus saying Nana pelvis, you got to tilt forward and that’s a game changer right there. From there. I’m going to slide my pelvis side to side. Again, a dozen plus, feeling at least about a minute or so into that stretch, and then rotating. Watch how my pelvis spins open back this way then spins across the body that way and as you spin into that, you’re going to feel some love in that lateral hamstring. The lateral hamstring is the biggest beefiest hamstring of the mall. And it’s a potent, potent thing as you put it under tension. In fact, if you want to take it to the next level, because that lateral hamstring is so strong in comparison to the two inside hamstrings, you can position your hands out to that same side and then go through that flexion and then slide to that same side and you’re gonna get a hamstring stretch like no other I guarantee. It’s an amazing, amazing stretch. And for that case,
I’ll leave it at that. From there. We’re going to take it to the next one. We’re gonna go the glutes. Now what I love about the glutes that is two major ways to search the glute muscles in the in the cage. The one I’m going to show you is going to be the most I think the most dialed in in terms of the book of glute muscles, you’ll see a lot of people do his stretches kind of crosses up and over to these bars, that’s a really good, I would say kind of like a piriformis stretch, but doesn’t really get the meat of, of the glute. So this is how we’re going to do it sideways facing, cross a foot up and up and over to second platform. Now, even though this puts my hip into more flexion, and more abduction, it kind of takes my leg into a little bit of external rotation. So it’s not perfect, but it’s, it’s great, though, hands gonna be in front of me, I’m gonna get my foot back, here’s the key head goes way over the foot, I’m actually looking to this open space, or the more my head goes over the foot, and the more my hips go backwards, glute max is under tremendous load. And it feels great. From there. Since I’ve already been set my body up in the forward and backwards, I’m not slotting my pelvis towards you and away from you. And then here’s the key one actually just wrote him hips towards you, and then Oh, back towards you. And I even look even looking. Now the cool thing about this stretch, in terms of tweaking it making it more advanced, is you can just start to can leverage through the hands even though I’m reducing my ability to hold on to keep my body still. And it allows me to connect at for more leverage to it. The key thing you want to watch out for is not letting this foot, lift and rotate, and slide over, you want to keep it pinned down to keep that relative adduction. And that relative positioning of so that glute has maximum stretch, least that your body can manage for that particular day. Now we’re going to move to the chest, there’s two major chest stretch. Now I’m going to I’m going to show you both are very helpful, one’s a little bit more dialed in one has a little bit more kind of freedom, freedom to it. The first one is going to be this split your feet. And a few ways to do this, I’m going to put my back foot is going to be my backhand and my front foot is going to be my front hand on either side of these bars. From there, I can start to kind of get my body into position you can see on my pelvis is rotated to the right and my trunks rotated to the right, well under stretch my right chest, so I’m going to rotate the opposite direction, and then even take my pelvis to the opposite direction. From there. I’m going to extend my trunk and open through my thoracic spine, I’m going to let my elbow point down to taking my humerus through external rotation, opening up my chest even more. And then I’m even going to look up and take a deep breath right through that chest, even through the anterior deltoid, even a bit through the bicep all great positions to go to go after. If you want to step this up a little bit more, switch your feet, because now my pelvis is pre rotated to the opposite side of where my chest is. So I’m already building that tension up through my abdomen and into my thoracic spine and in my chest. Now do the same thing. So I can hold there, I can drive left and right to add more of that little frontal plane drive and a given spin and look away from my hand spin and look away from my hand. Phenomenal, phenomenal stretch dials in right there. And you can even change your hand position to get a little bit more different positioning depending on how you want to do that. The other basic stretch is just grabbing one of the bars here flip for the chest, put one foot on the platform of the foot out, watch my elbows, I’m gonna point them down to get some good external rotation to the humerus. And then we’re going to push off on my back foot here and just extend pour all the way open. kind of caught the Titanic stretch, be honest with you feel like rows hanging out the front of the Titanic, catching some breeze. Sorry, that’s a millennial Titanic reference there. For those you haven’t seen it, it’s worth a watch come out of there. Again, in that stretch, as I start to get a little bit crazy there, you think about your hips going side to side too, and your hips rotating as well. No joke, I actually had a little thought pecs back back to high school and watching the Titanic. Okay, from there, after the chest is opened up, we’ve got to think about those pull muscles, those lat muscles. And this is where again, there’s a lot of options, but I’ll show you the one I think is the best is going to take forward you’re going to do a hip flexion you’re gonna grab on right hand on this on this big sweeping bar, left hand on the other side of sweeping bar, you’re going to sit back, and you’re basically going to just round forward. Now I have this tension almost like a pull up position. But now what I’m going to do is I’m gonna lock my left arm and rotate to the right. And as I rotate to the right, this locked left arm creates a fulcrum, a pivot point where I can spin in and really get that lat to open up in an amazing way. I’m in a pronated grip, I can go supinated grip to do the same thing. I can even change my hand to more of a kind of a neutral grip, or a neutral grip and a slight wood variation on these bars. I can do the same thing to go after different muscle groups have that lat to dial in how I want to feel based upon the type of polls that I did. And I can switch sides and do the exact same thing on the opposite side. Again, I’m feeling all the connections of the scapula all the connections through the allowed opening up just by changing the angulation of my body. And by changing the angulations appear, it changes how these muscles back here, integrate into the ribcage into the lower back, scapula, shoulder, etc. So instead of driving through the hips on that one, I was driving through the changing of the hands. So it’s a pretty cool setup. Great way to feel that, that stretch. And think about this one as you’re doing your strength training. Strength training brings muscles tighter and closer together. So we must therefore keep our mobility and flexibility and athleticism by stretching out so huge, huge takeaway after this one, every strength based workout, do some time spend the work opening up the muscles through all these different positions that I’ve showed you mix and match them. Hope that was of great value for you. And if it was, tell me some more muscles you want me to show and I’ll build them in for a routine for you. That’s it. That’s all I got for you. I’ll see you next time.
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