Name: 17 Minute Runners Flexibility Routine! (FOLLOW ALONG)
Uploaded: 2025-04-13T15:40:51.000Z
Duration: 17 min 40 s
Description: Thousands of YouTube videos with English-Chinese subtitles! Now you can learn to understand native speakers, expand your vocabulary, and improve your pronunciation...

And today I've got another runner's flexibility routine.

You're not really gonna need any equipment, but the ability to perform a calf stretch, either on a step, a wall, or in my case, some yoga blocks is gonna be useful.

Other than that, some time and space, and let's jump into this routine.

Right, we're gonna kick things off with the usual hip circles.

So seated, feet outside of shoulder width, chest up.

We're gonna drop both legs to the left-hand side, keeping the chest facing forward, back to center, back to the other side.

Just get a little bit of movement into the hips, into the lower back, as we warm up for this routine.

We're gonna start off by taking a look at the glutes, loosen up the hips.

We're then gonna take a look at the hamstrings, at the hip flexors, and a few bits in between.

Nice, slow, controlled, as I just get things moving to begin with.

And then we're gonna want to finish facing towards our left-hand side.

So left-hand leg into external rotation, and we're gonna twist over this left leg.

We're gonna try and just fold forward over the front of this leg.

So think about pulling the chest forward, hinging from the hips, and feeling that stretch in the front leg glute.

You're gonna think about trying to push your foot across the body.

So try to push it into your hand, build up some tension.

And you're gonna try and exhale, and just drop deeper into the stretch.

So if you can get your stomach all the way down onto your chest, you can begin trying to move your sternum closer towards the foot.

Again, just looking for a nice stretch over this glute.

Just gonna do a stretch now for the quad.

So we're gonna bring the right knee forward right to where that left foot is.

You're gonna tuck your foot underneath your bum, and we're just gonna lean back onto our left elbow, if you can do.

From here, you can take left foot, lock down that right knee, and then just try to lean back.

We should be feeling a stretch going over the quad and the hip flexor of this right-hand side.

And brownie points, if you can think about squeezing your glute, trying to push the hip up towards the sky.

It's gonna make this stretch more dramatic.

We're just gonna hold this position for 30 seconds in total.

If you can do, you can keep trying to sink the shoulders back and get deeper into this stretch.

Okay, then come back up, back to that 90-90 position.

Swivel around, we're gonna do the exact same on the other side here.

So over that right-hand leg, find your 90-90 again.

Sternum going over this front knee, we're gonna hinge forward as much as we can, thinking about rolling the pelvis.

Again, focusing on that stretch in that right-hand glute.

And then we're gonna do that rapid PNF, so try to push that foot across the body, inside of the thigh working.

Try to exhale, try to drop a little bit deeper into this stretch position.

We're just gonna hold this final position now for another 10 seconds.

Again, trying to get that sternum as low as you can.

Okay, take that left knee, place it right where that right foot is, tuck the foot under.

Right foot goes on top of the knee if you can.

Then we're gonna lean back as far as we can do onto that right elbow if we can.

Stretch now going over the top of that left hip.

Use your glute to try and push the hip up into the stretch.

Now we should be feeling like a nice stretch over the quad, over the hip flexor, potentially even over the front of the shin as well because we've got that foot plantar flexed.

I'm gonna hold this for 30 seconds or so.

Take some nice deep breaths if you can, thinking about trying to breathe down into where you're feeling that stretch, so right into the base of your belly.

We actually lie straight down onto our back.

So we're gonna grab just behind the knee of our left leg, pull it up to about 90 degrees.

You're gonna flex your foot as much as you can so pull the toes back.

Try to extend the leg, keeping the toes flexed.

Go as far as you can, point the toes, go back down.

So kind of like a cycle of leg flex, point, back down.

We're gonna do 10 of these in total per side.

Use the quad of the leg to try and extend the leg as close as you can to straight, really pulling those toes back towards you.

You're gonna feel probably quite an intense stretch over hamstring, back of the knee, into the calf.

And then if you find this easy, you can always try to pull the leg closer towards you to challenge that flexibility further.

So grab the right leg, lift up to 90 degrees, flex the toe, straighten the leg, pulling the toes back towards you, point it back down to the start.

Again, nice and slow, pointing the toes as far as you can in each direction.

And once we finish this, we're gonna move to more of a standing position.

So this one you're gonna want to be able to perform a calf stretch.

So either grab a couple of yoga blocks or use a step or a wall for this next section.

We're gonna place one block lying flat and then the other block just at an angle.

So this is the angle we're gonna use for our calf.

And we're gonna start on the left-hand side like we did in the last.

So place that heel as tight as you can, lean into it, keep the front leg straight, and then basically as far as you can, hinging forward until we feel a nice stretch over the calf.

Now the calves are just a stubborn muscle.

So unfortunately, we're gonna have to hold this one for at least a minute.

Ideally, if you find that these are particularly tight, you might want to hold it for longer, sort of up to two minutes.

But the focus is gonna be on just trying to sit here and feel that initial tension just drop off over a period of time.

That would consist of basically trying to press the toes into the blocks.

I'm gonna try and almost do like a calf raise, feel the calf itself contracts.

So for like five seconds, five, four, three, two, one.

And then once I relax, I should be able to try and move further into that range of motion or feel that the intensity of the stretch drops down slightly.

So one of those ones that can feel quite intense, quite nervy initially, and then it should quickly soften off.