Stretching Exercises

If you're on a mission to burn fat as fast as you can from your body, it's going to be vitally important that you're sure to include stretching exercises into your routine.  These stretching exercises will be beneficial because they'll allow you to increase the range of motion that you use during all of your weight lifting exercises therefore seeing more benefits out of them.

The greater the range of motion that you're able to work through, the more muscle fibers that you'll target and therefore, the stronger and leaner you'll be come.

In addition to that, by performing stretching exercises on a regular basis you'll also help to reduce the risk of injury during your cardio or weight lifting workouts, so that way you can feel confident that you're not going to be taken out of the game due to an injury.  As soon as you get injured the chances are high that you'll have to stop exercises altogether and that will really put a damper on your fat loss progress.

Let's have a brief look at some of the best stretching exercises that you can add to your fat loss routine.

Hamstring Stretch

The hamstring stretch is one of the most common stretches perform which is a very good thing because this is one group of muscles that most people are very tight in.  By performing one of these leg stretches on a regular basis you're going to help to reduce the chance of lower back pain development and make it feel more comfortable to perform exercises like deadlifts and lunges.

To perform the hamstring stretch simply get into a position where you're sitting flat on the floor and then while aiming to keep the back as flat as possible, reach forward to grab the toes. Keep the knee slightly bent if you have to.

What you want to think of while doing this one of the leg stretches is that you are pressing the stomach into the knees, not that you are rounding your back to reach the toes.  If you can't reach the toes that's fine – eventually you can work towards this but what's more critical is that your back is slightly bent at most.  Try and keep it as flat as you possibly can.

Lower Back Stretch

Second, we come to a lower back stretch.  This is without a doubt going to be one of the most critical stretches to perform to prevent back pain development, so one that you must do.

One of the best lower back stretching exercises is often referred to as the cat stretch and is where you get down on the floor so you're sitting on your knees.  Then from there, simply reach forward with the arms bringing the upper body close down to the floor in front of you but while doing so, focus on rounding out that back so you create a hunched over appearance.  This is going to help lengthen all those spinal column muscles and reduce all the tension and stress that's currently on the vertebrae in the lower back.

Hold this position for a good 30 seconds and then rest before repeating again.

Quad Stress

Next up, the third of our stretching exercises to perform to help blast fat faster is the quad stretch.  The quad muscles also tend to get quite tight as you go about your workout program since they are utilized in almost every cardio movement you do from running to biking to rowing.

In order to perform this one of our leg stretches, grab the right foot using the right hand then bring the bent right knee directly to the standing leg.  Think that the two knees are joined together here so that you can get into the right position and feel that solid stretch along the quad.

Your elbow holding the foot should also maintain a slightly bent position while it's pulling on the foot to increase the tension running along the leg.  Hold this for about 20-30 seconds and then switch over to your left leg and repeat.

Calf Stretch

The calf stretch is the best one to round out your stretching exercises for the lower body and can be done a number of different ways.

One of the most common methods of doing the calf stretch is to simply stand along a step with the heels just off the step and the toes maintaining your balance.  From there, allow the body to sink down past parallel of the step so that you feel that pull all along the calf muscle.

Note that you can also do this on just a single leg at a time if you prefer and usually that will make the stretch slightly more intense.  Hold for a good 30 seconds and then come back up again before repeating.

The second calf stretch that you should add to your stretching exercises is the wall calf stretch.  For this one you walk up to a wall so that you're about a foot away from it and then place the toes directly up on the wall with the heel on the floor.

Once positioned, lean into the wall while you feel that same amount of tension on the calf muscle once again.  Hold and then switch sides and repeat.

So there you have all of the best stretching exercises that are going to reduce post-workout muscle soreness and help you get in a better workout each and every time you hit the gym.

Always aim to perform these stretching exercises at the end of the workout when the muscles are nice and warm, or if you're going to do it at a time other than your normal workout session start with a brief five minute warm up first which will help loosen the muscles up so you don't pull anything and cause an injury to occur.

If you work hard at these movements, you should see noticeable benefits in your flexibility in as little as a few short weeks.