TOP TIP: The Daily ‘Super Couch’ Stretch

If you sit a lot every day, whether it be at a desk, the sofa or travelling, It’s almost a guarantee that your hip flexors, hip capsules, psoas and quads are insanely tight.

They say prolonged bouts of sitting down is really bad for your body mechanically, as your core switches off, the back takes the strain, your posture slumps and you lose range of motion in your hips.

I’ve been sitting down my whole life doing all of the above! And I can vouch for the rehabilitation and mobilisation needed to get my body properly functional when I decided to take training seriously. Especially when it came to squats, deadlifts, lunges and the the like. I’ve had to deal with hot painful knees when doing leg day, feeling ‘blocked’ when trying to go deep in squats and generally a sore and rounded lower back when trying to do deadlifts and other exercises that require a firm neutral back.

The Super Couch Stretch – A Daily Go-To Mobility Move

Now, the reality is that you will need to do a bunch of corrective exercises, mobility drills, stretches and posture adjustments through time to undo the damage of chronic poor posture sitting. We’ll cover these other regular corrective drills in later micro blogs.

That said, the Super Couch is for me THE ONE active stretch I try to do everyday, to combat the tightness built up through the day. If you could commit to 4mins of this stretch a day, say just before you go to bed, you will be doing your hips, legs, core and back a massive favour. It will be that small daily commitment that will make the other priming and mobility work that more productive, which in turn will help with stronger and more functional lifting in the gym.

 Directions

As per above photo and video:

1. Place your left knee into the corner where the wall meets the floor. For comfort, have something soft under your knee
2. Then get yourself upright into a lunge position, keeping said knee as close to the wall as possible
3. Push back with the forward lunging foot to draw your hips back towards your left foot, and feel that stretch across your left quad and front of hips
4. Straighten up your posture and hold this pose for 2mins
5. To stretch the psoas (a deep core muscle under your abdomen), reach to the ceiling with the left arm, whilst keeping your chest forward and up.
6. Feel free to move around a little to make the stretch ‘active’, and look for areas and angles of tightness. When you find a tough spot, hang out there for a while.
7. Switch legs and repeat. 2mins each side for 4mins total will do as a daily effort

It will definitely feel tight, and you’ll experience some pain if you’re new to stretching, but it should be tolerable and weirdly enjoyable. Your body is screaming out to be functional and express itself in full range of motion. After a few days, you will begin to enjoy this parasympathetic stretch, where you feel good for doing something good, and you slow things down as you focus sorely on opening up your joints and lengthening your muscles. Your body will thank you!