Grab A Partner: Try these 2 Hip Opening & Spine Elongating Partner Stretches
The truest form of Assisted Stretching is when someone (a partner) helps stretch your body into a deeper range of motion that you cannot do on your own. I call it “partner stretching.”
I first learned this technique in the late 1980s when I was at The Cooper Clinic doing research for my personal training business’ soon-to-be-launched Step Aerobics Program.
When I came home from Cooper Clinic, I started partner stretching my clients at the end of each workout session. I had many of them tell me that they would pay me to skip the workout and go straight to stretching—no joke!
I also started doing partner stretching at the end of my fitness classes and I had students tell me that they come to my class because they love the stretching at the end—I am serious.
In a class that I recently led, we partnered up to stretch. The look on my students’ faces after they had been stretched was truly amazing! It was a look like something incredible had just happened to them.
Something incredible did happen to them—they got help getting “unstuck.”
Stretching allows for greater oxygen and blood flow throughout our body, improving circulation and carrying important nutrients into cells and toxins out of the body. Increased oxygen levels in your body lead to higher energy levels.
As we loosen tight muscle tissue, we stand taller, feel better, sleep better, and move with ease.
While most people find time to work out, not everyone makes time to stretch. Staying fit is great until we become so tight that we get stuck inside our own bodies.
In the words of Tom Brady, “The way to get faster and stronger is not to work harder and harder, but to slow down and pause to let your body recharge.”
This may be hard to believe, but I have been stretching out my sons for their entire life. Almost every night, we would lie on the floor and “pull each other out,” as we called it back then.
It was our way of life. We just knew that it made us feel better and we slept better after a long day. Never did I think it would one day become my passion and my business!
Yesterday, as I was walking to my car after class at the Y with a student and friend, she told me that she has been stretching out her family at home and they love it. She said that they beg her to stretch them out all the time. This made my heart sing!
Even though our boys are grown and gone, my husband and I are still on the floor every night “pulling each other out.”
It’s our way of life!
And I hope it inspires you to make it part of your life, too.
Grab a partner and try out these partner 2 stretches:
Partner Stretch: Hip Opener
Grab a partner and open up your hips and glutes!
1. Allow one person to lie flat on their back, with the second person standing at the lying person’s feet.
2. The lying person will bend both their knees, crossing one ankle over their bent knee.
3. The standing person takes the lying person’s foot from the floor, places it on their quad, and leans in toward lying person. Listen to your partner as you lean in and feel resistance.
4. Hold this stretch for 15 - 12 seconds.
5. Repeat with other leg, then trade out partner roles so each partner gets a stretch!
Partner Stretch: Overhead Spine Elongator
1. Have one person lie flat on their back.
2. The second person sits with legs straight out in a V-form at the head of the lying person.
3. Using a ring or a belt or a towel, the lying person reaches their arms over their head and grab onto the ring.
4. The seated partner holds onto the ring and leans back with arms extended directly in front of them (make sure the leaning person is not pulling back with their arms, but simply leaning back). This pulls the torso up and out of the trunk and elongates the spine of the partner who is lying down.
5. To further stretch out the trunk, repeat the same motions of this stretch, but with the lying person gripping only one hand to the ring as the sitting person leans back. Repeat with each arm.