Daily 10 Minute Seated Stretch and Exercise for Older Adults
Hey, everybody, I hope you guys are all having an amazing day!
Today, we're going to be doing a quick 10 minute, deep stretch in the chair. Check out the live walkthrough below!
Coach Lindsay: If you haven't already, go ahead and find a comfortable spot — either seated, on your sofa, or wherever is most comfortable for you. But be seated and make sure you have some room to kind of stretch out a little bit. And then we are going to get started.
All right. So as we get started here, the best thing to do initially is just kind of find your neutral position. So get seated up nice and high, shoulders back, and with both feet flat on the ground. I like to do my stretches kind of sitting in the middle of my chair, if you have a chair with a backing, you can kind of scoot all the way back and use the back or you can sit on the very end — it'll kind of vary on the type of stretch we do as well.
But whatever you want to do, it's totally fine. There are no rules here. So find a comfortable position.
And we are just going to start off with some side reaches.
Coach Lindsay: So we're always going to start or I'm going to start every stretch on with the left side. But feel free to start with whatever side feels best for you. So for the side rep reaches, we're just going to take our left arm and bring it all the way up over our head. And you can use your right arm as support, holding on to the side of your leg, you can hold on to the base of your chair if you're flexible enough, but whatever is most comfortable, you want to make sure that you're not hunching down, you really want to make sure you're opening your chest and really reaching, pretending like you're holding hands with somebody next to you. This is gonna stretch this muscle called the latissimus dorsi right here, so the lat muscle so this is always a good one to do after you've done some back exercises.
Continue to hold this for about 10 more seconds. Then, go ahead and come back to your neutral position. And we're going to do the same thing on the right side. So reaching over using that leg or your the base of your chair for support. Another modification if you really want a deeper stretch is widening your legs and going a little bit lower. So kind of do whatever feels right here. Like I said, there's no rules, you just want to do whatever you feel is getting you that stretch.
Hold here for just a couple more seconds. If you can, reach just a little bit further to get that deep stretch. And bring it back to your neutral position. I like to shake it out after each stretch to bring everything back in blood flow.
And so next thing we're going to do is a shoulder stretch.
Coach Lindsay: So we're again going to start with that left side and bringing your arms straight across your arm your body here. So with this, I'm sure many of you have seen this stretch done where we're holding on to the wrist — we don't want to do that here. The reason being is if you hold on to your wrist, it's easier to hinge at the elbow and then you're missing that shoulder stretch. So keep your arm completely straight, hold it your elbow or your forearm, whatever is most comfortable. And then pull that arm across your chest. Another thing to be mindful of here is making sure you're not hunching. So pulling your shoulder down and away from your ear and then across your chest. Then you should feel that stretch right here on the top of that shoulder muscle. And this is one of my favorite stretches — it just feels so good.
Hold here for about 10 more seconds. Alright, shake it out again. And then we're gonna repeat the same thing on the right side. So bring that arm right across —again holding up that forearm or elbow, or whatever feels most comfortable. Bring your shoulder away from your ear. Whenever I'm stretching, I kind of like to rock back and forth, do some side twists. Like I said, this is your stretch. So make it how you want it to be.
Hold here for about 10 more seconds. Same thing, if you can kind of pull just a little bit harder just to get that deep stretch here for the last five seconds or so here. And release. Shake it out, you should feel that nice warmth right here in the top of your shoulders.
Alright, the next stretch we're going to do is the infamous tricep stretch.
Coach Lindsay: We've all seen it. So first, we're going to bring our arms all the way up to the sky, really elongate that spine, and reach for the ceiling. This always feels so nice — especially first thing in the morning. So, reach, reach, reach. And then with starting with the left arm, we're going to hinge that arm, pat yourself on the back here, and then pull your elbow back with your right arm. So this is going to get that nice deep tricep stretch here. If you need a modification for this, if you feel that this is too much tension on your shoulder, you can bring it down a little bit and kind of give yourself a big hug this way — that takes a lot of pressure off of this shoulder joint here. So whatever feels most comfortable for you, you can do it here. Or you can do it here. Whatever works.
This one too: make sure that you are keeping your back nice and straight, you're not hunching down — that's not doing you any good. Sometimes it makes me feel a little bit better and a little bit easier, but this is the best way to get that deep stretch. Hold this for a few more seconds here. This is a lot harder to hold for a long time because I feel my fingers start to get a little numb. So you might start feeling that too. It's okay. And relax. Go ahead and shake it out. Get that blood flow back to your fingertips there.
And then bring your arms back up again. Nice stretch, feel that elongated spine reaching for the ceiling. And then same thing with the right hand, patting yourself on the back, pulling that elbow back with your opposite arm, getting that deep tricep stretch in here.
Remember — you guys can do your modification as well. This is what that looks like. Both are gonna stretch that tricep muscle. Alright. And just because it feels so good, we're gonna bring arms back up again, all the way to the top, really reach for your ceiling. Stretch that spine out. Take a few deep breaths here and relax your arms back at your side. If I could do that all day, every day, I would.
Okay, so the last upper body stretch we're going to do is for the chest.
Coach Lindsay: This one's designed to really open up the chest. And so the way to do this, take both hands, interlock them behind your back and then extend your arms. This might be a little bit difficult. So if you can't lock your hands, feel free to just extend your arms back and down as far as you can. Really doesn't matter. You're still gonna be opening up your chest and getting that stretch in. So whatever feels comfortable — you can be here, you can even be up a little bit if that puts too much pressure on your shoulders. But ideally we want to be here.
Feel free to rock back and forth, side to side — whatever feels good. I see some animals joining us for the stretch (on the Zoom call), I love that! They need it too, right?
A few more seconds here. And release. Shake it out. That's going to pretty much do it for our upper body stretches. So take some time to kind of get that everything loose. Make sure you're still in an neutral position of straight posture, feet flat on the ground, taking deep breaths as you go throughout these stretches.
So the next thing we're going to stretch is our abductors.
Coach Lindsay: So that's going to be the outside portion of your hips. Basically, just bring your left leg up on top of your right leg, ankle sitting on your right knee. And then you want to push down on your knee — on your left knee to whatever's comfortable. So this one can be a little tight, especially if you have hip mobility issues. But do what's comfortable here, even just sitting like this is a deep enough stretch. But if you want to take it a little bit further, hold on to that ankle for stability, press down on your knee, get that good deep stretch right here on the outside of your hip.
Do this for a few more seconds. Push down on that knee just a little further if you can, or if you feel comfortable. And relax. Shake out your legs if you need to. And we're gonna do the other side. So bring that right leg up, ankle on top of the knee, hand on top of the other knee, and push down to whatever is comfortable.
If you need a little bit of a deeper stretch, you can bring your leg in closer to your body and then push. Or if you just want to have it be a little bit more relaxed, keep your leg extended out a little bit. I really liked doing this stretch after long walks because we know our hips kind of take a beating, especially on hilly walks and stuff. So this is a great stretch to do after walking or after doing squats and all those fun things.
Hold here for a few more seconds. And release. Shake out your legs if you need to. The best part about stretching has shaken it all out when you're done, right? Alright!
So the next thing we're going to do is a sitting lunge stretch to stretch out the groin area.
Coach Lindsay: This one's a little bit more difficult. Do the best you can — I'm going to do my best to help walk you through it.
Turn to the side a little bit, we're going to do the left leg or the left side first. So making a 90 degree angle here with your left leg, you are going to extend to whatever's comfortable. It helps to sit on the very edge of your chair with your right leg. And so when you do that, you're going to want to turn and you're going to really get that hip flexor groin area right here.
So to get a deeper stretch, you can take your your right leg out further and sit more into it. Or if you just want that nice light stretch, bring your leg back in and just lightly sit into it. I kind of like to go like in the middle. Get that good deep stretch in here.
If you want to take it an extra step, I like to kind of combine the first stretch we did — the side reach — with this. Just kind of helps really elongate that entire left side of the body. So whatever you feel comfortable with, you can do that or you can just stay here.
With these — and this goes for this lunge stretch and if you're doing lunges —make sure your body is in line. So your foot should be facing this way, your leading foot should be facing this way, and your body should be facing this way. Hold this for a few more seconds. Get a little bit deeper and lower if you can.
And come back back to the center. Stretch it out again if you need to. And we're going to repeat on the other side. So same thing, rotate just a tad. Right leg at a 90 degree ankle. Left leg goes back into a lunge position And then sit in it deep. If you need some support, hang on to the back of your chair.
This one also sort of stretches your calf muscle too because you're flexing your back foot there. So that's kind of nice plus!
This one's a good one to do if you sit a lot or work at home, and you're sitting a lot in your job, just take a few seconds to rotate in your chair and get this good hip flexor groin stretch and it's a good one to do. I work from home obviously, and I sit a lot (coaching a lot of you guys!) and so this is a good way to do to take a break. We'll hold this for a few more seconds here.
And go ahead and bring it back to center. It's funny how sometimes stretches also feel like a workout!
Rub out your legs if you need to, we have a few more stretches here to go through.
The next thing we're going to do is really rotate our ankles and get those stretched out.
Coach Lindsay: So starting with the left side, again, bring your knee up to your chest as far as you can. And we're going to just start rotating our ankle in whatever direction you want — we're going to cover both directions. So just start somewhere or we're going to do about 10 to 15 circles here. I don't know about you guys, but I am hearing a lot of snap crackle on popping from my ankles. So that probably means I need to stretch more!
Alright, go ahead and take it in the other direction. 10 to 15 circles here.
Great job, you guys are doing awesome! All right, drop that leg down.
And you guessed it, we're repeating it on the other side. So bring that right leg up to your chest as far as what's comfortable and rotate that ankle. 10-15 circles here. And in the other direction.
Awesome, keep going if you need a few last minute circles here.
Bring yourself back to that neutral position. Sitting tall, feet flat on the ground.
And we’re going to do my favorite closing stretch. So we're going to do some seated sunrise salutations.
Coach Lindsay: So we're going to start down below here. Bringing your hands underneath of your legs. And we're going to come up with a big, deep inhale. And down with an exhale.
Inhale. Exhale. Few more here. Alright, last one just because it's so nice!
Inhale and exhale. Bring yourself back up to that neutral position.
And that concludes our quick 10 minute stretch here for you guys! So I really appreciate you guys joining me — hopefully this is something that you can practice every day.
And we'll see you guys here tomorrow for our Health Coach Answers event or next week for another stretch!