Stretching - Total Body Stretch

Our first stretch is called the “neck side stretch”. What you want to do is down with your feet, hip-width apart. Great, knees relaxed; shoulders relaxed, looking straight ahead. You are going to drop your ear to your shoulder, this side. Good. Extend the arms and make a nice, long stretch. How about a little smile? There you go and you are going to get a good stretch. You want to try to hold it up for 10 to 30 seconds, and then you are going to switch sides. Start straight up ahead. Good. Drop that ear down. Great, and extend the arm. Really stretch your fingers. Looking good, 10 to 30 seconds. Great! So, that is our neck side stretch. Let us try it again. Our next stretch is called “arm circles” and the purpose is to loosen up the shoulder joints. This is Dylan and he is going to demonstrate it with me. You can start with your right side, feet hip-width apart, and just do an easy slow, controlled circles, opposite arm. Good. You want to try and do it five times on each side. Great. Big circles Dylan, nice and controlled. Let us try now both, together. Here we go. So take it easy around, loosening out that joint. Good, five repetitions. Now we are going to reverse it. Opposite side, we go right. Good. Isn’t this so much fun? That is it. All right. Is that five? I think it was five. Okay now, both together. Here we go. Big circles. Keep going around the back. Great. These are arm circles. We will try it again from the top. This is our upper back stretch. What you want to do is, you want to think about—turn to the side first, so Katie can show you great form. Again, feet-hip-width apart and knees relaxed. Katie is a soccer player, possible future Olympian. Okay, so you are going to bring your arms forward, send it out, clasp them. You want to imagine that you are sort of rounding over a ball and you are rounding through your shoulders. You can now feel the stretch through your shoulder blades. A good cue is to look towards your belly button while you are stretching. Nice round back. Stretch and hold it. Good. Let us release and try it one more time. So arms extended out, great, and then round, round, round, round. Pull it forward. Now, drop towards your belly button. This is our upper back stretch. This is our side trunk stretch. Cassandra is going to help me demonstrate it. She is a hip-hop expert and does a little bit of tap as well. You actually might have recognized Cassandra from other DVDs. What you are going to do is you are going to have your feet hip-width apart. You are going to extend up your arm, and then you are just going to slightly take it to the side, supporting the weight. It is really important to support your body weight and reach up long. You want to have energy in that arm stretching the side trunk. Good. Holding 10 to 30 seconds and let us switch sides. Again, supporting the weight, extending up long. If you do not have energy in that arm, you are not going to feel the stretch, so you really want to think about pulling up. Good, then take the other side. And you want to think about doing it a few times on either side. Good, so this is the side trunk stretch. This is out chest stretch, and Larry here is going to demonstrate it for us. He is a taekwondo expert. Okay, feet apart, arms up, and you are going to extend the arm out to the side. Now as you extend to your shoulder, you want to think about lengthening to your chest and extending through your fingertips. Good. We are going to show you from the side now so you can see it again. Together we are going to drop the arms, we are turning side ways, arms coming forward, are extending out and then you want to extend through those fingertips to get a really great, long stretch. Remember, holding for 10 to 30 seconds. Great! So that is our chest stretch.