As I mentioned in my review of Lower Body Stretch and Free Warm Up, Linda Wooldridge has 100s of free workouts available on YouTube. Many of them have warms ups and stretches included in the workout, and many do not. Sometimes the warm up and/or stretch is very short, and maybe you want something longer. Well, Linda has you covered. She has created an 8 minute warm up you can do before a workout and then she also has two different stretches. One 7 minute stretch to do at the end of an upper body workout and one 9:30 minute stretch to do at the end of a lower body workout.
Today I did Linda’s Old School upper body strength workouts (review should post this weekend) and finished it off with this upper body stretch. This is a really nice stretch to have. Most trainers, if they take the time to stretch you out, will spend much more time stretching the lower body than the upper body so having this upper body focused stretch is very useful for my purposes.
Upper Body Stretch is 7 minutes long. Linda says you can add this to the end of any of her upper body or abdominal workouts to get some extra stretching. Start on all 4s and do cat & cow. Come into straight arm plank, lower into tricep push up then into up dog and hold. Child’s pose (hold for a long time, changing arm position). A stretch similar to thread the needle (shoulder stretch). Side stretches w/ knees bent to side/beneath you (Linda calls it “mermaid position”). Sit cross leg and round back. Mermaid stretch on other side. Sit on knees and stretch chest by lacing hands behind you. Forearm/wrist stretch. Tricep stretch. Shoulder stretch (arm pull across chest).
For more info on Barlates and other (free) streaming workouts I’ve sampled and reviewed, check out my Streaming page.
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