Now, today, following on from the video I did about flexibility for upper body
We’re going to go into a lower body flexibility routine using the foam roller and a couple of stretches.
Again, this is going to be a short routine that you can do at home to make a really big difference to the health of your lower body, and actually, how you just generally feel.
The more flexible, the more loose your body feels, actually the healthier and the better you’ll actually feel.
In this video, you will learn:
- A lower body flexibility routine involving 4 exercises using the foam roller and a couple of stretches
- The first exercise is for the side of the legs using a foam roller
- The second exercise involves foam rolling the inside of the thigh
- The third exercise utilizes a lacrosse ball on the glutes
- The fourth exercise is the Hip Flexor Stretch
Transcript:
Stephen Gray: Hi! This is Stephen fromTheDVCC.com, the place to be for weight loss and toning advice. Now, today, following on from the video I did about flexibility for upper body, we’re going to go into a lower body flexibility routine using the foam roller and a couple of stretches. Again, this is going to be a short routine that you can do at home to make a really big difference to the health of your lower body, and actually, how you just generally feel. The more flexible, the more loose your body feels, actually the healthier and the better you’ll actually feel.
So once again, this is a harder foam roller than you’d necessarily need to start with. You can get the big, white, long foam rollers. They are the easiest ones to start with. Again, you can go on to Amazon, you can go into most sports shops now. They stock foam rollers.
We’re going to start with an exercise for the side of the legs. Now, this could be quite sore. And particularly if you’ve never done this before. So make sure that you start off very gently. We’re going to place the foam roller just above the knee. We’re going to go on to the side of our body. We won’t have both legs on top of each other to begin with. We’ll take the other, the opposing leg, over the top. And what’s going to happen is you’re going to slowly slide down the side of your leg to just below your hips. So don’t go over your hip joint. And then you’re going to slowly slide back down.
Now, if you want to make it harder, you can take your foot off the floor so you’re not actually resting and press down. And if you really want to make it tough, you can actually use your opposing leg on the top, but I would suggest you start nice and slowly. And you’re going to move slowly, up and down over that “ITB band” it’s called. Iliotibial Band. All the way just below your knee, back up just below your hip. And you’re going to go over that area 10 to 15 times. And obviously, you’re going to do that with both legs.
From then, we’re actually going to foam roll the inside of our thigh. Okay? The abductor muscles. So, I want you to place the foam roller about 45 degrees. You’re then going to put your bottom leg out of the way there and you’re going to place your leg over the top nice and relatively straight. And you’re looking to get the inside of your leg there. So from there, we’re going to slowly slide down. Again, just up until – well, I’m just going to assume you know the area. You don’t want to go too far up. Otherwise, that could be quite sore. So you’re going to slowly come down just above the knee again. And you’ll find that you’re actually very sore mostly around that area there. That’s your VMO or Vastus Medialis Oblique. And you’re going to come back up, up and down, nice and slowly. And the easier that feels, more pressure. You can just press down on your legs. So you want to really try and free up those muscles there. And you’re going to do again 10 to 15 passes, and you’re going to do that on both sides.
So, from there, I’m going to use the lacrosse ball. I would suggest trying to get hold of a lacrosse ball rather than a hockey ball. Hockey balls are a bit bigger, a little bit harder. And what we’re going to do is we’re going to actually use this lacrosse ball on our glutes. So your bum area. Now, what we’re going to do is place the lacrosse ball underneath your bum. Now, ideally, we would try and get into this position here. However, you’re going to find that’s quite sore to start with. So if you want to just have both legs lying on the floor, you’re going to just move around your glutes for about 30 seconds to 2 minutes and you’re going to find little areas that are really sore compared to others and you’re just going to hold it and move it around those areas and hope that they free up. And what you’ll find is that by doing this routine regularly, those areas will just free up.
So, I noticed that I’m a bit more sore to the outside of my glutes here. So I’m just going to concentrate a little bit more on them. Just move around. Like I said, between 30 and 2 minutes. Ideally, get towards 2 minutes and just move around, find any sore spots. Until eventually, what you’ll find is it gets easier. You’ll be able to put your leg up there and that just really opens up your glutes so you can see if there’s any areas that you can really get a hold of. And just there is pretty sore so I’m just going to hold it around the area and move it around like that.
So, both sides of your body use with that lacrosse ball and you’ll notice a really big difference with that one. You’ll notice how it frees up your hips. It will actually make your back feel a lot better as well. So from there, we’re going to go into a stretch a million different ways, but I think we’re going to do it on the floor. It’s easier whilst we’re already down on the floor. We’re going to place the front leg at 90 degrees.
And from there, we’re going to lean forward. Okay? So we’re stretching both our glutes and hopefully a little bit of Piriformis muscle. And we’re going to move forward. And you’re just going to hold that position for about 30 seconds. So just gradually, as it eases up, you’ll just be able to lean a little bit further forward. That’s it. Gradually moving further and further forward. That’s it. For 30 to 45 seconds is ideal. So, obviously again, we’re going to go for both sides. And by now, you’re going to feel a really big difference to how your body actually feels, particularly around your hip area.
We’re going to finish off with one final stretch, which is going to be a Hip Flexor Stretch. Now, again, this can be done quite a few different ways. We can raise the back leg if there’s something behind us. As I don’t have now, I’m going to show you just the normal Hip Flexor Stretch, which you may well already be aware of. You’re going to push forward with your hips and squeeze your bum. Okay?
Now, like I said, if there’s something behind you, you can raise the back of your foot. That actually would really accentuate the stretch. But for now we’re going to push forward. If we really want to increase that, we can just raise the same arm of the sideway stretching and rotate slowly, “controlledly,” if that’s a word, rather like that. Again, 30 to 45 seconds, holding those positions, both sides.
And that’s again four exercises, I think it is. Four different exercises we’ve gone through that will make a massive difference to how you feel. We do obviously have – I mean, we have routines that we use with clients that are more like 11 exercises long, but for something that takes about 7 to 10 minutes to do every evening, if you were to join that with the 5 minute , that’s 15 minutes a day of flexibility work which will have on how you feel, the health of your body and just generally, how you feel about as the more flexible you are, the easier everyday life is.
So this is Stephen from TheDVCC.com. I’d really be excited to see if any of you are using this routine and how you’ve found it. Let me know if you have any questions as well.
