The best pre-workout stretches

The ideal pre-workout warm-up is specific to the activity you are about to complete, so as a rule you want to warm up the muscles you are going to use.

In addition, you also don’t want to waste too much of your precious workout time doing lots of different movements and stretches.

Warm-up movements

If your body is without injury or specific pain, the following warm-up movements should best prepare you for a workout:

1. Rock-backs

2. Lunges

3. Supine Lumbar rotations

4. Kneeling Thoracic rotations

5. Large circles with arms out to the side

Why these movements?

The beauty of these five exercises is that they produce both stretching and activation of most muscles in the body. They also cause movement at multiple joints at the same time, providing an efficient and safe way to warm up, without the risk of injury often caused by stretching to extreme ranges of movement.

Instructions

20 reps total (therefore 10 reps each side for ex’s 2, 3 + 4), do gently at moderate speed, avoid pain or moving too far in these directions.