10-minute Full Body Movement

This routine is designed to open up your anterior chain (the muscles in the front of your body) and strengthen your posterior chain (you guessed right – the muscles on your backside). Being in a constant kyphotic position (the technical term for a rounded back posture) from sitting down and working on our laptops causes tightness and stiffness, which can be addressed with these simple exercises.

The routine

Do every exercise for 30 seconds on each side. There is a total of 10 exercises, giving you a simple 10-minute routine – you can extend it if you wish or repeat it multiple times a day.

Quadruped position

• Have your knees in a 90-degree position and your shoulders over your wrists.
• Keep the thoracic spine neutral and the neck in line with the rest of the body.
• Focus on anteriorly and posteriorly tilting your lumbar spine.

Child pose to cobra

• Stay in a fully flexed position breathing in through your diaphragm
• As inhale slowly start lifting, and segmentally extension the hips + lumbar spine, then the thoracic spine, then the neck and shoulders to finish with an exhale.
• Take a breath in and out.
• Then repeat backwards back into child’s pose

Thread the needle to open book

• Lock the rest of the body (lumbar spine)
• Pass your arm through the other and as you come up place that hand on your head and try to open up to the ceiling
• Allow the breath to guide you
• Don’t let other compensations take place
• Thoracic rotation is a vital need for our spinal health (especially for sports, walking, running etc...)

Dynamic Downward dog to crunch

• Start in a plank position with the arms protracted to activate stability and activated our serratus anterior.
• Keep the core neutral and neck in line
• As you go into downward dog, push your body back working the T-spine extension.
• As your leg straightens the other will lift, bend at the knee and twist. This will place a stretch on the quad and hip flexor. It will help with lumbar rotation; it will stretch our entire lower posterior chain with the leg that is straightened and on the ground.
• As we come back in you will crunch and pull your abs in, which will activate your inner core (TVA-transverse abdominis muscle).
• If you want to challenge yourself, you can bring your abs to the side or across the body.

Greatest stretch in the world

• This will open up your hips (groin), hip flexor on the opposite side
• Adding in t-spine rotation
• If you can’t touch the ground you can use your pillow and work on gaining your flexibility as you continue to use this routine into your daily life

Hip flexor stretch

• Use a pillow to support your knee
• Start with your hands on the ground
• Make sure your hips are in line
• From there grab the back of your foot, drive the hips in with the side you are stretching. This will fire your glutes and make sure we are gaining the full stretch on the hip flexors and quads.
• Don’t push yourself further then you can handle because you will hurt yourself
• Take your time and slowly work on gaining more range of motion (ROM)

Bear plank to reverse tabletop

• Start in a quadruped position with your knees slightly off the ground.
• Slide one leg through.
• Lift your hips up in the air and reach behind you.
• This is working our posterior chain while working on our shoulder flexibility and stability. As well open up that anterior chain.

Pigeon stretch

• You want to have your leg at 90 degrees to really target the piriformis and the medial glutes.
• When you bend the leg you aren’t stretch those muscle entirely
• You can use a yoga block or your pillow to place behind you butt to use as a reference if you can’t get to the ground.
• To go further back use the back leg to walk or slide further into the stretch.
• When you bend forward! Do not bend with the spine, this isn’t helping you stretch. You want to keep the entire spine straight and bend at the hip.
• When you have your limit stay there and allow the diaphragm breathing to relax you and to let your body go further.

Nerve flossing

• This will stretch the tightness in the nerves.
• When you come up make sure you point your toes up (dorsi flexion) and when you come down plantar flex (point down).

Glute Bridge

• Great exercise to fire the glutes and core together, while working on the stability of the lower lumbopelvic region.
• Progression one is a double leg glute bridge, then you would do two legs down with one leg, next up with one leg down with one leg, and so on.
• This last progression we are adding abduction and adduction. To really brings everything together and works on muscle that a lot of individuals do not focus on.

Article written by Zakaria Benbouchta

Zakaria Benbouchta is a martial artist, business owner and academic from Montréal. He’s been fighting since the age of four, beginning with karate and diving into MMA later in life. He has competed for Team Canada and Québec at the national level in Boxing. Aside from fighting, his passion is to teach and change peoples’ lives. He holds a BSc in Exercise Science, specializing in Athletic Therapy, and is currently completing a Master’s degree in Exercise Science.

Find him on Youtube and Instagram for fun workouts, health and nutrition tips.