Jeff Cavaliere, ATHLEANX.com.

Don't spend forever getting yourself ready to work out.

You don't have to.

Today I'm going to give you a very quick routine.

One that sort of flows from movement, to movement, to movement that's going to get you ready in a lot of different ways to prepare your body to train.

All right?

I'm going to get right into it.

Basically, what you want to do is start with something that gets the posterior chain loose because it's one of the areas that gets most tight on us.

Our hamstrings, our backs.

So you start with an inchworm.

You literally come down here, and you're going to walk yourself out.

When you get to the bottom it's not just about flexibility, guys.

You want also stability, too.

We have stability by getting our shoulders in this position here.

We walk ourselves back, we're getting some compression in the shoulder joint.

That's a good thing for your shoulders.

You'll notice that probably when you come down, because of your tight hamstrings, your knees will kind of kick forward, and then you can get them straight, maybe about here.

The goal is, on each successive rep, to try to get your hamstrings to be able to stay back by keeping your knees back further, and further on each rep.

You work your way all the way out, 10 reps on the last one.

You come right down.

Again, I said this would flow from one to the next.

You get in this 90-90 position here.

90 degrees at this hip, 90 degrees at that hip back there.

Just like this.

Now we want to get a lot done in one stretch.

So we lean out over this forward knee, which is going to stretch the hell out of this forward hip here, and then we hook our elbow on the top of that knee here, like that, so we get this added stretch of the lats, and the backside of the posterior shoulder capsule here, on that side.

Then we reach out this way with our arms.

Five seconds, come out of it, go back down, and do it again.

This is not a static holding routine.

This is a dynamic stretching routine to get yourself prepared to train.

So you don't want to sit here and hold forever.

So we lean in, and then we come out of it, and we swap the feet up, and we do the same thing.

On that last rep here, you do five to each side.

On that last rep you just straighten yourself out, come down.

Now we've got to work on that spine a little bit.

So in this position here we're going to roll our body, leave the leg trailing back there, and keep your arms reached up overhead so that we're working on our thoracic extension.

That middle of the spine, getting it to be able to lean back more here, let gravity help you.

Then you come down and you roll yourself to the opposite side.

You're also getting some good mobility in here through your lumbar spine, feeling nice and loose, and of course, stretching that top hip.

Just like that.

You keep alternating five and five to each side there.

Then on that last rep you come into this position here.

You sit up, put your hands back, open up your chest, get your shoulders and your chest stretched out here into this reverse table.

When you get up here, drive up, activate your glutes, reach, push through here, reach across your body, and go as far as you can.

So now we're getting a stretch on the hip flexor, on this leg mostly.

You're getting compression through this shoulder joint, which is good for activating the muscles inside that, the stabilizers inside your shoulder, and of course, you're getting more of that thoracic extension here in rotation.

That way.

You come down, alternate, open, reach.

Push as hard as you can through your glutes to activate them.

Alternate for five on each side.

Then we stand up.

Here's the flow.

It keeps going.

We stand up and we go now into the three-way lunge.

We step out here, lunge, reach back.

Now we're stretching out the hip flexor on this side, but we're also getting glute activation on the front leg.

Reach, don't hang out here too long.

Three-way lunge.

We're going to go now 45 degrees.

Step and lean back towards the planted leg.

Now we're getting a little bit of a groin stretch at this oblique angle here.

We're also getting the glute activation at this 45 degree angle.

Then we step back and we step straight to the side.

Again, lean back in that direction, really stretching the adductors and groin on this leg.

At the same time we're opening up the ribcage on the right hand side and still having that glute activation.

Three, five times of the three-way sequence on this leg, five times of the three-way sequence on that side.

Now it gets ugly.

The hamstring pulses.

Nobody stretches their hamstrings right.

You have to be in an anterior pelvic tilt if you want to stretch your hamstrings.

Meaning, your pelvis has to be in this position, not that position.

If you're doing anything out of this position it's not really a hamstring stretch.

It's not really putting the stretch where it needs to be.

So what you need to do is, you get into this position, you lunge out, get into the anterior tilt.

Get your back arched.

Drop straight down from here.

Almost like a sprinter position here.

Now you drive back with the knee.

I didn't cave in.

I lifted in this position here.

I'm just dropping down and I'm driving my knee back.

Using the pulses.

One.

Kills.

Two.

It's hard to get it all the way straight because you're already using up hamstring length by having your leg in front of you, and now, of course, we have the pelvis in the right position.

So it's really difficult.

But you want to try to pulse and get that leg back as straight as you possibly can.

Five times on each leg.

Then we do straighten the leg here.

Let the leg stay locked out, get into the anterior tilt, and now we do five reaches.

The reaches start here.

Reach forward as if you're trying to push somebody away from you.

Right here, you'll probably run out of room pretty quick, especially if you don't allow your knee to buckle.

So right here, reach and back.

Reach and back.

Reach – you do that five times on each leg.

Then we've got to work on finishing this off, getting the upper body a little bit loose.

So now we do something called a can opener.

The can opener is, if you look at the lower body first, you're loosening up your hips.

You're making a mobile rotation, rotation, internal, and external.

Your arms are just following along for the ride.

But now, once you're ready, pretend you're throwing with your right arm.

It's up here, and then down across your body.

It's up, and it's down across your body.

So now you're getting this dynamic stretch here of the posterior shoulder and rotator cuff on the way down, and then you're opening it up, and you're opening up the chest on the way back.

The other arm just goes along for the ride.

It travels more across the body this way.

All the way up, chop down.

10 on this direction, and then 10 in the other direction.

Then we want to get those shoulders right before we're about to use them.

We've had a lot of compression.

Let's get them to feel nice, and loose again.

We can do that by just letting gravity help us.

These are dead shoulder circles.

So you're letting your arm hang as dead as it can be.

Don't hold on tight.

Try to let it hang as dead as it can be, and you try to make big circles.

Your fingers won't touch the floor here if you're at the right height, but you should reach for the floor.

Let them almost feel like they can scrape the floor each time.

Do nice, 10 big circles, feeling as if your shoulder is pulling down a little bit, getting a little bit of distraction, and loosening up the shoulder joint.

10, and then 10.

The other arm.

Then finally, we have ankle breakers because all of this starts from the ground up.

You want to make sure your ankles feel nice, and loose.

One of the places we get extremely tight is the outside of our calves.

The peroneal muscles that run up, and down the side.

So what you do is, you step and you allow your foot to bend down.

If you have to cheat it, you just step forward a little bit from the start, but you'll feel this nice stretch going on the outside – believe me, this is safe – on the outside of your ankle, and in your shin.

Then you just take it, you step forward, and just turn, and rotate in the opposite direction.

Then flatten everything back out.

Drop it, step, rotate, just like that.

Again, three, four seconds is all you need to do.

You're getting this nice, dynamic stretch of all the ankle muscles there, like that.

You go through 10 on each side.

I'm leaning this way so that when I push my hips out that way, I'm getting that nice stretch on the outside of the ankle.

There you have it, guys.

Everything will flow.

There's no wasted movement here.

You've got glute activation, you've got shoulder activation, you've got shoulder stabilization, you've got thoracic extension, you've attacked your lumbar spine as well, you've gotten your chest and shoulder capsules to be loose, too.

You've worked on everything from the ground up, and you've done it in a short period of time.

I can't stand when I see people devote 20 minutes, and 30 minutes to just their warmup.

It's unnecessary.

Try this out.

You're going to feel nice, and loose.

I don't care what workout you're doing.

You can use this flow – this matrix, we like to call it – 10 exercises to feel as great as you can getting ready to attack your training.

Now, static stretching is a whole other thing.

It's a whole other purpose.

This is meant to get you ready to train.

Remember, guys, a plan is necessary if you want to be able to get something done without wasting a lot of time.

We have a lot of plans over at ATHLEANX.com.

From your training, all the way to your nutrition.

If you head over there right now, click the link below this video, there's a plan for you.

Depending upon whatever goals you have at the moment, take just two minutes to use our program selector tool, and you'll be able to find the program that's customized specifically to what it is you're trying to achieve.

In the meantime, if you've found the video helpful leave your comments and thumbs up below.

Let me know what you want me to cover here in our future videos, and I'll do my best to do that for you.

All right, guys.

I'll see you next time.