15 Minute Warm up

Join me for this quick routine to warm up your body in the morning or before a workout. This warm-up keeps you mindful of your posture and breathing. This is perfect for beginners or those limited on time.

Transcript

Hi there, I'm Victoria. I have a bachelor's in exercise and fitness. I've been a massage therapist for 20 years and I'm also a yoga instructor. And today I want to introduce you to a 15 minute warmup that is a mobility drill for your body. So before you do a workout or before you even just have to sit at a desk all day or even in between times where you're having to sit at a desk, This is a really good way to get your body, Your mind and all the muscles of your body warmed up and ready to go. So let's get started. And as always, If something is uncomfortable, Make sure that you stop before the discomfort hits. So I don't want you pushing too far. We're just trying to explore how far our bodies can go and then see if we can get those muscles to warm up and get ready for our day. We're going to start with the first one. You can do this seated or standing. I'm sorry, Kneeling or standing. I do want you to come up to your knees if you are on your knees. We're going to bring both arms forward and we're going to try and get this in in 15 minutes today. Going to make fists so you're really powering and feeling the power within your hands and your knuckles and you're going to push your arm forward You're going to bring it up. And around and you're reaching the whole motion when you get to this back you're going to reach the other arm forward and reach this arm back twist in your spine a little bit Keep your core just a little bit tight so see if you can squeeze a little bit in the belly. Maybe bring the hips back and bring it down so you're getting a good stretch here. Forward then we're going to do the other side so pushing that knuckle forward Bring the arm up. Reaching it around. Splitting the arms apart or reaching them away from each other. Bring the arm down. Reaching it to the floor. And bringing it back forward. And now we're gonna start adding on a little bit more. We're gonna reach and look with our eyes. So you're looking up with your eyes. Looking up towards the ceiling. Looking back as you go back reaching that other arm forward don't forget about that And breathing, Reaching the arm down. Looking down and looking forward. That other side reaching up. Looking up, Reaching the arms apart, Splitting the body in half. Reaching down. Looking down. And back forward, Take a couple of deep breaths. It should feel like you can breathe through this whole motion. You're reaching and stretching the nerves in the whole arm and upper part of the body. And reaching up one more time all the way around. If it feels good you can do it again. Reaching down. And forward good we're going to move on to all fours Hands underneath the shoulders and knees underneath the hips here. I love a good cat cow. But I want to take a little spin on this one. We're going to kick our leg out to the side. Your leg can be ankle to hip. Even if that's uncomfortable, You can bring it further back. So I'll let you guys play with this up here. It can be a little bit of a big stretch. And if you're really flexible, This might be super easy for you. So I would encourage you to just take this one a step back. If this bothers your wrist. You can use your knuckles and make sure that you're not folding your thumb underneath your fingers. You're keeping your thumb out and kind of tucked in like you're going to punch somebody. We're going to take a couple of cat cows in this position. Making sure we're using the eyes too. Elbows slightly turned out and elbows unlocked here for my bendy people. We're going to tilt our tailbone up, Look up towards the ceiling, Drop the chest, Let the belly open, Take a big inhale. And then exhale, Tuck the chin towards the throat. Look down at your belly button, Round the back, Tuck the tailbone under, Squeeze your butt, Push into your arms and really lift your spine up to the ceiling. And then we're going to reverse, Start to drop and open the tailbone. Spread your butt cheeks here, Drop the belly. Look up towards the ceiling. Just taking deep breaths where you can find them. So it doesn't have to be perfect. But if you breathe and it stretches and it feels really good, You're probably doing it right. Deep breaths, Open, Look up. And come back rounding one more time open and look up and rounding and come back to center. We'll switch to the other side. The side might feel different so just play with your body positioning a little bit and notice those differences. You don't have to change anything but just noticing is half the problem. Opening up those butt cheeks again, Looking up to the ceiling. We're using our eyes the whole time looking forward and down tucking the chin in looking to the belly button Looking to your deep chest if you can. Tucking the tailbone under, Spreading the butt cheeks, Reversing, Breathe. Inhale open. Exhale, Close and round. Pushing the arms into the ground, Getting a little bigger in the back. Opening breathe. Exhaling around Hopefully I didn't just yell into the mic there. I'm sorry. Open and breathe. One more here. Good and coming back to center we're going to give our wrists a little bit of a shake and a little bit of a break The next one is for your knees for your ankles and then we're going to go right into the hips from there. We're gonna take the right leg forward. And a couple of things here a lot of people will say don't bend your knee over your toes well how are you supposed to stretch your calves if you don't ever flex your ankle or push your knee forward So I say as long as it doesn't hurt, It's fine to do that. So I want you to take your knee and just kind of start to guide it over your toes. Bring it over the front of the toe. See if you can keep the heel down. If it doesn't want to stay down, Then stop. We just want to get a little push into the ankle and calf. And then you're going to feel this back leg as well. You can use poles so you can get some PVC pipe. If you can't stay balanced or you can use a couple blocks, You can lean forward as you come down. Just making sure your knee is tracking in alignment well with your toes. Release your toes. Let your toes spread apart and stretch. And then shift your weight back. Trying to come back up to this lifted position every time if you can. You can fold forward again, Let the back round a little bit. That's fine. Again, We're just warming up and we're playing with our body position. Then we're going to check that back leg too. So we're just making sure the foot and the ankle are somewhat in alignment. You're not rotating in a bunch or out a bunch. Sometimes we do that to keep balance, And there's nothing wrong with it, But it's just something we wanna notice, And when we can keep things in a line that we want to try to do that, And then we can start exploring those other spaces. One more time, Pushing forward. Stretching out this front left leg too. And pushing back. We're going to stop here i want us to stand up nice and tall and we're gonna lift our spine up like someone's pulling a string on the top of our head. And I want us to squeeze our butt just a little bit, See if we can find a little stretch down in here. And then we're going to push our butt back like someone's karate chopping them backwards. And we're going to try and push our right butt cheek further back than our left and set your hand down. You can also put your hand on a block if you need to. And then we're going to squeeze and come back up. And lower back down, Opening the butt cheeks towards that back corner of your room. So this right butt cheeks really open here. We're going to squeeze and come up and we're going to add on some arms. So if you're out of balance or out of whack, Don't add the arms. Just keep it simple. The arms are going to come out like this to the side. And as you come down, Your hand is going to come to the ground and your other hand is going to reach up to the ceiling and you're going to twist a little bit towards that right leg. And then we're going to lift and come back up to center. Now we can get more fun and more complicated with this if you want to. Try it again. Bring down. You should feel a stretch on your butt. And then a little more on the outside of the leg if you're really tight there. And if you want to challenge yourself, Go ahead and follow along. Otherwise, Just come back up. If you want the challenge, You're going to come up. You're going to stay twisted and you're going to drop your right arm and lift your left arm and try to open your chest looking up towards the ceiling. That's usually when most of us fall down is trying to change our gaze. And then bring the arm back down. We're gonna do it one more time. You can do the challenging version or you can just come back up. And try to keep your balance here. Reversing back Keeping the core a little tight so you're still squeezing the butt cheek whenever you come up. So you're protecting your low back. And then back down Good. We're going to go ahead and switch. I know my arm got a little floppy there at the end too. It's okay if yours did too. We're gonna switch sides. Doing the other leg, Getting it warmed up. Press in the knee forward. Remember, Just start easy. And especially if you have knee problems, This is actually really good for your knees to practice. Pushing forward. If you have knee replacement, Sometimes there can be a lot of scar tissue in there. This can be difficult, Then it will be definitely another lesson that we'll have to work on. That's something that I work with people a lot. In helping them recover. With is those knee injuries. Pushing forward and back, Start to go a little deeper every time. You'll kind of know if you wiggle your foot forward if you're too far. And you can fold forward again if you need to, Bringing the hands and arms down. But make sure you're coming back up to that standing position really tall and lifted. Seeing how wobbly you get when you're at the top. Pushing forward. And back up one more time. We're going to add on we're going to bring that right hand down left arm up if you're doing the full version and then you're just going to either rotate Back up to center, Squeeze your right butt cheek this time. Stretching out the front right side of your leg. Coming back down, Right hand down, Left arm up. And if you're doing the complicated version, You're going to reach back. The left arm comes back. Squeeze that butt to stabilize and then reaching up, Looking up towards the ceiling if you can. This is my bad side. My not so balanced side, Reaching down, Opening that butt cheek back towards the corner. So left butt cheek opens, Twisting towards that leg. If your foot wants to come off the ground, That's a really good sign you're throwing out into your joint a little too hard. So just be easy with yourself, Hand down. Left hand up. Pushing into that butt, Getting that nice big stretch right here. Last one opening up. Good. Taking a couple of deep breaths. Back down Good, And back to center. Okay. I like to finish off with just something easy which is usually just some breathing and some light motion. Let's go ahead and lay on our backs. Laying on your spine. For five minutes a day on a hard surface replicates the same effect that you get when you're sleeping. Your knees can be bent or straight. It's up to you, Whatever feels good with your low back. I want us to just do little circles with the arms. And we'll do the same thing with the legs. You can do them both or one at a time. I'm going to do both just to. To save us some time. You're just gonna start making it a little bigger. And a little bigger until you get. Full range of motion so make sure you've got plenty of room on the floor. To bring your arms up overhead a little more each time. When you're here, If you feel your low back listing, I want you to pause and see if you can take a big exhale. And really ground down in that low back. It doesn't have to be flat all the way on the ground. In fact, We don't want it to be totally flat, But we just want you to have control over your core as you lift your arms up overhead. Good. Nice big open arms and then you're going to reverse. Just sweeping them back and around. This is my favorite, I love. The reverse of this. One direction always feels really good so I tend to do that one a little more. And then again, Just start getting smaller. And smaller. And we're running out of time. Make those circles. Move your wrists in different patterns. It's okay to circle them a little bit too. And we're going to do the legs really quick. So you can do both legs again. If you have a hard time controlling your core, When you start to get really big open motions, You're either gonna hit your stuff or you're gonna run into where you can't make that circle without your low back bothering you. So one leg is perfectly fine. Just start off with a little circle. And start making it a little bigger, A little bigger. And obviously the bigger you get, The more you're going to have to straighten that leg out so you don't run into your own leg. This is really good to do with a strap. So then you can just guide that leg through motion. And I want you to pay attention to your toe, So we're turning it in and out. And in. Out. And in. We're letting that hip joint stay seated right where we want it out. And we'll do the other side. I'm going to turn so you can kind of see where my foot is. In space here. So I'm starting off just making a regular little circle and I'm kind of starting to follow my pattern. I'm going out and in. And then as I get bigger, I'm really turning out. And back in. And you can take this as quickly or as slowly as you want. I'm slowing it down so you can see. But again, I want to keep us under 15 minutes here and we're right at that mark right now. So if all you had was 15 minutes, You got to go. You are all done. You do both leg circles and get that in. Rotating out. And then you're going to switch directions. So you're rotating in with the toe as you come in. And rotating out as you come out. Rotating in as you come in. Out as you come out. And if you get a little catch there in your hips, That really just means that you're more dominant to go in or out on one side. So pay attention as you're rotating. You might notice that one is easier to control than the other. And there might be, You may not make it all the way out here. You might have to keep that leg in nice and tight. And it's a warm up. It will warm your legs and make them feel nice and mobile. And we're just going to shake it out. And we are all done. That is your. 15-minute warm-up. Hopefully you found this helpful. Stay tuned for some more videos where we're going to talk more about scoliosis, Kyphosis, Shoulder injuries, And knee problems. So if you have any problems with that, We're going to do some fitness stuff and get your muscles strengthened, Get your muscles opened up. There's no replacement for a good massage therapist and some good body work, But this will help along with that good therapy. So I hope you enjoyed and we'll see you next time. Time.