5-Minute Mobility Stretching Routine & 6 Tips for Better Results

Have you ever noticed your body feeling stiff and achy after sitting too long or performing repetitive tasks? This discomfort typically results from a lack of mobility and flexibility, which can contribute to injury, limit physical performance, and hinder daily activities. A mobility stretching routine can help improve joint health, flexibility, and range of motion to alleviate this discomfort and help you move better. This article will provide valuable insights to help you achieve your goals, such as How to Get Flexible Fast and range of motion quickly and safely with an efficient, easy-to-follow routine.

Pliability’s mobility app is a valuable tool for reaching your objectives. With a library of over 100 routines and 800+ videos, you can easily find a mobility stretching routine that fits your needs, goals, and schedule.

What are Mobility Stretches?

Mobility exercises target specific joints and the surrounding areas to improve the range of motion and function. Improving mobility enhances athletic performance and reduces injury risk. Also called “mobility work,” these exercises help to warm up stiff joints before physical activity and enhance the quality of movement so you can avoid injuries like muscle strains that occur when your body doesn’t work properly.  

Mobility Routine Benefits  

If you’re a runner who keeps up with everything experts recommend to prevent injury, you’ve likely heard about a form of movement called “mobility exercises.” Even if mobility is a new term to you, it’s something sports medicine doctors, physical therapists, and any providers focusing on movement have long emphasized as important. And it’s not just for runners, but all athletes or anyone who moves their body and hopes to stay strong and injury-free. 

Understanding the Importance of Mobility Exercises for Joint Health

Mobility exercises (sometimes called “mobility work”) are designed to increase the range of motion of a joint, says Samantha Smith, MD, a Yale Medicine primary care sports medicine specialist. “The joints are the points of motion in our body. Any time we move, we don’t want a limitation because of a stiff joint. This can happen for many reasons, including inflammation of the joint or just because we haven’t been using it, which could cause the soft tissues around it to tighten,” Dr. Smith explains. “A muscle injury or tightness can also affect the joints. Likewise, if the ligaments aren’t being used, they can become less pliable.” 

Dr. Smith adds that everyone can relate to waking up in the morning and feeling stiff or tight. “And you can feel the difference between that and how you feel after your body is warmed up from exercise, where you have more freedom of movement,” she says. “That is the goal of mobility work to give your joints that freedom instead of having them be a source of restriction and to potentially prevent muscle strains and joint soreness.”  

Do Mobility Exercises Include Stretching?  

A full-body stretching routine can help you unfold and improve body alignment. But what exactly is stretching? It helps to understand how your body works. All muscles shorten and lengthen when they are being used. Stretching a muscle temporarily relaxes it and allows it to lengthen. If you were to look at a muscle under a microscope, you’d see striated fibers called sarcomeres, which are the basic building blocks of muscles. Each sarcomere comprises two types of filaments or proteins: 
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• Actin (which is thin) 
• Myosin (which is thick)
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During a muscle contraction, these filaments slide against each other, while little cross-bridges between the filaments enable the muscle to contract and lengthen. Of course, all this takes energy and happens without you even realizing it, but that’s the general process. It’s a microscopic dance between proteins every time you move. 

While the jury is still out there about the actual effectiveness of stretching, one thing is for sure: it feels good! Stretching first thing in the morning or after a long day in a slouched position can temporarily reduce aches and pains related to bad posture and is exactly what your body needs to relax. 

Dr. Smith explains that mobility work can include yoga and stretching both static and dynamic. “If you think of dynamic stretching as something you do to prepare your body for a run, then static stretching is about increasing the length of a specific muscle group because it might be tight,” she says. “Mobility exercises, Dr. Smith adds, can be done before a run, after a run, or on a rest day. You can think of them as a form of recovery,” she says. "Perform mobility work in addition to your usual routine, rather than having it replace a warm-up or cooldown."  

Is Mobility the Same as Flexibility?  

While mobility and flexibility are related, there is a key difference, Dr. Smith says. “One way to think about it is that mobility is specific to joints, and flexibility is specific to joints and muscles. Someone can have great hip mobility, for example, but not have the muscle flexibility to do a split,” she says.

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• Does Stretching Help You Lose Weight
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• Morning Stretching Routine for Beginners
  
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• Mobility Exercise Routine

5-Minute Full Body Mobility Stretching Routine

This five-minute routine can relieve stress and improve flexibility. Here's a detailed breakdown of the movements and how to perform them well. 

Neck Stretch

Before you do anything, relax your shoulders. Did you feel them just drop a little? Chances are, you’re hunching your shoulders up throughout the day, storing stress and tension in your upper trapezius muscles, which you didn’t even know you were using. To stretch the upper traps and leave your neck feeling looser, begin by placing one hand over the opposite side of your head.
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• Slowly and carefully draw your right ear to your right shoulder, using your right hand to overpress the left side gently. 
• Keep your face forward. 
• Hold for 30 seconds. 
• Repeat on the other side.

Cat Cow (60 Seconds)

The first stretch exercise will loosen up the spine and back muscles in preparation for our next exercises. This is especially helpful in the morning after we’ve been lying in bed for several hours.

To perform it:
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• Get onto all fours, knees under your hips, and hands under your shoulders. From here, gently round your back up towards the ceiling. 
• Imagine as if someone was pulling your mid-back with a rope. 
• As you do this, take a deep breath while tucking your head down. 
• Exhale as you reverse this motion by curving your back the opposite way while lifting your head. 
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Based on lab research by a back pain expert, Dr. Stuart McGill, he found that just seven to eight cycles of this are needed for the most benefit. When done slowly and controlled, this should take about a minute. Need help nailing down this motion? Try placing a band around your mid-back. This will help pull your spine into the bottom position. It will then give you the resistance and sensory feedback you may need to learn how to round your spine upwards properly.

World's Greatest Stretch (30 Seconds Per Side)

The next stretch exercise, the “World’s Greatest Stretch,” will be the most effective way to simultaneously hit all the key problem areas. This stretch has three parts to it:

Lunge  

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• Get into a plank position with your hands under your shoulders and feet together. 
• From here, lunge forward by bringing your right foot up as high as possible (ideally next to your right hand). 
• As you do this, you should feel a deep stretch in the groin muscles of your front leg and the hip flexors of your back leg. 
• Take your right hand and place it on your knee. 
• Push your knee out and back, then forward and back a few times to loosen up the hips and ankles.  

Drop  

We'll deepen the stretch even more in the second part of the stretch. You can do so by:
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• You are dropping your right elbow as far towards the ground as possible while rotating your upper body towards the ground. 
• As you do this, try to keep your right knee pushed out rather than letting it collapse inwards.  

Reach  

For part three, we will really open up the mid and upper back. To do so:
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• Rotate your upper body to the right and reach your right arm as far overhead as possible. 
• Try to keep your back leg as straight as possible as you do so. 
• Reach back down 
• Repeat this for five reps, or about 30 seconds, before switching to the next side  

How To Regress The Exercise  

This is quite a difficult stretch exercise. To make it easier, you can keep your leg bent or your knee on the ground and work towards straightening it more and more over time. Don’t be discouraged if you can only reach so far here and there in the beginning. Just stay consistent with it, and it’ll improve very quickly.

Asian Squat (30 Seconds Hold, 30 Seconds Rock Side To Side)

We will do what you’ll just call the Asian squat. But with a few modifications to open up the hips and ankles:  
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• Get a rolled-up towel and place your heels on it. 
• From here, using a squat stance that's typically just outside shoulder-width, squat down to however deep is comfortable for you. 
• Keep your chest up, and try to keep your heels down. 
• If your heels come up, roll up the towel to make it even thicker. Otherwise, it's fine if you have to keep your heels up. 
• From here, place your arms on the inside of your legs. 
• Use your elbows to push your knees out. 
• Sit in this position for 30 seconds. You should feel a deep stretch in your groin and the muscles around your ankles. 
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In a rush to get to work? You can have breakfast while you’re at it. 
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• For 30 seconds, move side to side to stretch out each ankle one at a time. 
• Avoid collapsing your knees and pointing your feet too far outward as you do this. Doing these takes the stretch away from the ankles. 
• Keep your feet angled out at about 30-45 degrees max. 
• Keep each knee in line with the outside of your toes.  

How To Progress The Exercise  

There are a couple of ways to progress this stretch exercise. In the beginning, if you struggle with ankle mobility, you may need a lot of heel elevation to get into a deep squat comfortably. Over time, try to use less and less heel elevation. See if you can eventually get to using no elevation at all. 

At the bottom position, to open up the hips even more, you’ll first just push your knees out with your arms straight ahead. Once that gets easy, try to place your hands together in a prayer position. Once that gets easy, place your hands together into fists. Each progression will open up your hips more and more by spreading out the distance between your elbows.

Half-Kneeling Thoracic Rotations (30 Seconds)

We will focus on mobilizing the upper back with rotation and opening the chest. Here's how to do this stretch exercise: 
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• Get into a half-kneeling position with your right leg bent as close to the wall as possible and your left leg planted forward in a lunge position. 
• Place both arms directly in front of you, with your right arm making contact with the wall.
• From here, push your right hand into the wall as you rotate your upper body to the left, trying to reach your left arm to the other side. 
• As you do this, avoid rotating at your hips and try to rotate only the upper body. 
• Return to the starting position
• Repeat for 30 seconds before switching sides. 
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To make it easier when starting, try moving your planted leg away from the wall and rotating as far as you can without rotating your hips. Try moving your leg closer to the wall and rotating further as this improves. Once you can get that down, you can progress it even further to open up the chest and shoulders by sliding your hand against the wall as if drawing a half-moon.

Wall Slides (60 Seconds)

Now that we’ve loosened up your upper back, we will temporarily have the mobility to activate better and strengthen some of the smaller, weakened muscles in the back. Strengthening these muscles will help you maintain these mobility improvements in the long term. The exercise we’ll use to do so is wall slides.

To perform it: 
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• Stand with your back against a wall and contract your abs to flatten your lower back on the wall. 
• Slide your arms up and down the wall. 
• Place your feet further away from the wall to make this stretch exercise easier when starting. 
• Over time, try to get your feet closer and closer to the wall while trying your best to keep your lower back flat against the wall. 
• When done properly, you should feel a few muscles in your mid-back light up as you raise your arms. 
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Can’t you initially keep your arms in contact with the wall all the way through? Or you can’t slide your arms up very high at all? That’s all perfectly fine. Just focus on improving this over time. 

Full 5-Minute Daily Mobility Routine 

Here are the stretch exercises in your 5-minute daily mobility routine: 
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• Cat Cow (60 Seconds) 
• World's Greatest Stretch (30 Seconds Per Side) 
• Asian Squat (30 Seconds Hold, 30 Seconds Rock Side To Side) 
• Half-Kneeling Thoracic Rotations (30 Seconds) 
• Wall Slides
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Focus on doing as many high-quality reps as possible within the 1 minute you have for each stretch exercise.

Related Reading

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• Hamstring Stetches
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• Ballistic Stretching
• Thigh Stretches
• Chest Stretches
• Types of Stretches
• Dynamic vs Static Stretching
• Best Apps for Stretching
• Best Mobility Stretches
• Best Lower Body Stretches
• Best Stretches for Athletes
• Stretches for Arms

Six Tips for Safe, Effective Stretches

1. Warm Up: The Unsung Hero of Flexibility

Muscles stretch more quickly when they are warm. This makes warming up before flexibility work crucial for both safety and effectiveness. You can warm up for flexibility work with any light aerobic activity that gets your heart rate up and increases blood flow to your muscles. 

For example, try marching in place or taking a brisk walk for five to 10 minutes. Dynamic stretching or “mobility work” can also help you prepare for your flexibility routine.  A few minutes of these movements, which gently take your muscles through a range of motion, can prepare you for static stretching. You can also use warm heat packs or take a warm shower to help get your muscles ready for stretching.

2. Find Your Edge, Then Back Off

To gain flexibility, you need to stretch the muscles to the point of discomfort. However, finding your edge and backing off is crucial to avoid injury. Stretching should never be painful. If you feel any pain, ease off the stretch until you feel comfortable. Reset your position and try again. Over time, you will improve your flexibility and be able to stretch further with less discomfort. 

3. Use Proper Form and Focus On The Target Muscle

Good form is essential for stretching just like it is for strength training. Pay attention to your posture during flexibility exercises, particularly sitting or lying on the floor. Good form translates to better gains in flexibility and less likelihood of injury when stretching tight muscles. 

Another tip for safe stretching is to focus on the muscle being stretched. You may notice that one side of your body is often tighter than the other. Work on balancing this over time. 

4. Breathe Easy

Breathing is an important part of any flexibility routine. You should breathe comfortably while stretching or use yoga breathing. Whatever you do, don’t hold your breath while you are holding a stretch. As you breathe in and out, your body will relax, and you can increase your range of motion. 

5. Stretch Often for Best Results

You’ll make the best gains in flexibility if you stretch frequently daily or on as many days of the week as possible. At the very least, aim to do stretches two or three times a week. Stretching dos and don'ts To ensure you always stretch safely, consult the dos and don’ts listed below, and you will get the most out of your stretching. 

6. Stretching Dos

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• Ensure that the muscles being stretched are thoroughly warmed up 
• Stretch at the end of your training session 
• Relax 
• Breathe easily 
• Hold each stretch for a minimum of 30 seconds 
• Follow an all-over body program for stretching to avoid postural imbalances 
• Follow correct technique 
• Avoid pain; stretching should never be painful 

7. Stretching Don'ts

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• Try and stretch cold muscles; it’s a recipe for injury 
• Stretch before your warm-up or workout 
• Bounce or rock whilst holding a stretch; you could overstretch and cause an injury 
• Hold a stretch for just a few seconds 
• Hold your breath 
• Focus on just leg stretches, or just upper body stretches

Related Reading

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Improve Your Flexibility with Our Mobility App Today | Get 7 Days for Free on Any Platform

Pliability can help people recover from: 
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• Injuries
• Surgeries
• Chronic pain
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The mobility routines are designed to improve flexibility and range of motion, helping the body move better and alleviate discomfort. If you’re feeling limited by pain or your ability to move, Pliability aims to complement your fitness routine and help you move better. 

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