Fresh off her record-breaking win at this year’s CrossFit Games, five-time “Fittest Woman on Earth” Tia-Clair Toomey is back creating content on her YouTube channel. In her latest video, Toomey shares an insight into her stretching and mobility routine. As her busy schedule doesn’t always allow for lengthy mobility sessions, Toomey breaks down the four key lower-body stretches that she uses to stay limber in her squat workouts, which also help to minimize her risk of injury and aid recovery.
Toomey starts off by demonstrating the low dragon, which focuses on the calf muscles as well as mobility in the ankles. With her left leg extended behind her, Toomey then tries to get her right knee over her right foot while keeping the heel on the floor. She performs this for two minutes on each side. “I think that is allowing me to really breathe deeper into the stretch, and it’s also allowing my muscles to feel the stretch and get the benefit out of it,” she says. “Depending on how much time you have, you can obviously change that suited to you.”
This is followed by a saddle stretch, which works the quads. “If your quads are getting really tight, it can affect your knee joints, so you can do the full saddle or the half saddle, which is a little less intense,” says Toomey. “One knee is bent, the other one is extended, and then you can lean back as far as you go.” Again, she tends to do around two minutes on either side.
Toomey’s third stretch is the lizard, which stretches out the hip flexors and the hamstrings. “You can go as deep or as shallow as you want,” she says. Next up is the seated straddle, which Toomey highly recommends as a way of alleviating lower back issues.
“You’re going to feel it through your inner thighs, which is great, you will also probably feel this around the knee area as well, but this also helps your lower back,” she says. “If you’re someone who constantly has lower back pain, this is a great stretch to help reduce that.”
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