Moving through Midlife | Habit Stack & Movement Snacks for Midlife Moms, Parenting in Midlife | Fitness over 40

Ep 69.2: MS/Stretch your Quadriceps

September 26, 2022 Courtney McManus
Moving through Midlife | Habit Stack & Movement Snacks for Midlife Moms, Parenting in Midlife | Fitness over 40
Ep 69.2: MS/Stretch your Quadriceps
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It is always my goal to help you and your family move more. So every Thursday, I am dropping a movement snack into your ears to help you and your family move more. If you find yourself spending a lot throughout the day, you will know the burden of having tight quadriceps, those quadriceps get tight, that's the front of the leg, it gets tight and needs to be stretched out. But I challenge you to try this slightly different movement pattern when you stretch and see if it increases that stretch for you. And helps that quadricep feel a lot better. So as always, this month, we are focusing on stacking our September. And we want to stack the habit of the quadricep stretch in with our daily life. This evening, when you're making dinner and standing at the stovetop or waiting on the oven, I want you to give yourself a little quadriceps stretch. And what we're going to do is we are going to take that foot, you are going to lift that foot back towards the heel. Now there's a few things I want you to pay attention to, when you do this mat movement to see what your mobility is like one or and as well, your balance. So first off, do you have to hold on to something to be able to bring that other foot up? If you do, then you need to really focus in on some balance work and some foot strengthening exercises to help you with balance work. The next thing is as you are bringing your heel back towards your bottom. Do you have to kind of flick it up? Do you kind of have to use momentum to get it up? Or are you able to just use that hamstring to pull it up. If you're having to use momentum and flick it up? Then you need to work on strengthening those hamstrings with some deadlifts go back to actually it's not here. I thought I recorded it. But no, it is a daily movement snack. And that would be our laundry room deadlifts. So that would be one thing you could practice. If you are in our daily movement snack program, you'll be able to find that I believe it was day three, yes, day three. So what you are going to do is you're going to work on strengthening those hamstrings. And also pay attention to if you have to pull that heel out to the side to grab it. And how your mobility within your hip and your shoulders and things might be affected by doing that. So the there's a few things that are occurring when you're trying to pull that heel back and just make note of them. Some of them I gave you exercises for some, you'll have to kind of dive deeper, either on your own or reach out to me or join the posture program. And you'll be able to get more information in regard to that. So what we are going to do is you're going to grab that ankle, many people will grab their foot and they will pull their foot back to their butt. But what is happening when you do this is you are using the mobility of the ankle. And you're not getting as deep of a stretch into the quadricep and hip flexor. So we're going to bring our hand up to our ankle instead. And then I like to flex my foot and then think about pushing my hips forward a little bit. knees should be in alignment with one another and no knee should be pulling out in front of the other. If your knees pulling out in front that would tell me that you really are tight and we need to work on this stretching maybe in a different position to kind of help you ease into it. I would say that would be like on the floor hip flexor stretch, where you're kind of going down into a lunge with the knee on the floor. But yes, you are going to be grabbing that ankle, bringing the knee to the knee, squeezing your glutes a little bit to tilt your pelvis back into a neutral state and feel what that feels like. You might want to hold 20 to 30 seconds on one side. Then do the same thing on the other side to help you work on releasing that tension in the quadricep. Of course there are a few things that may be causing this, if you sit a lot, you're going to be dealing with this a lot. If you are a person who uses your quadriceps, each time you go down into a squat, your quads are going to be tighter. Those people I would recommend working on strengthening the hamstrings as well. And all of that stuff can be happening through a good program, where you're not being told to do 500 squats or something ridiculous like that. You need variation of movement patterns. And I'm really big on not overusing any one muscle. So we want to make sure that we're hitting all of the muscles within the legs. So find a program where you're doing different movement patterns, not just squats, you would want to do squats and lunges and lateral lunges and curtsy lunges, and deadlifts and different movement patterns that are going to work that muscle in different ways. And that is it. That's your movement snack for the week. So a quadricep stretch. If you have any questions always reach out to me my email is Courtney at form fit naples.com I am happy to help you. I welcome you to jump on a call with me. So we can talk through some of these things with you if you're dealing with tension and tightness and pain, and anything. I'm happy to speak with you about that. If not, you're welcome to join our daily movement snack, provide you with exercises, work, five minute workout stretches similar to this that will help you start to feel better in your body. And also know that there will be a link in the show notes with a YouTube video so that you will be able to see this movement as well. And I hope you all have a wonderful day make sure to keep on moving thank you so much for joining us today. If you could do me a favor. If you like what you hear. Could you leave us a review or take a screenshot and share your favorite takeaway on social media. And make sure to tag us over at raising underscore healthy humans. Now go out and enjoy more movements throughout your day.