Mobility warmup for upper body resistance training

Warmup and flexibility training discipline is a limiting factor for performance development in every sport I’ve ever engaged with.

This is a highly time-efficienct warmup/mobility/stretching routine to run before engaging in an upper body resistance training session.

Instructions:

Go through the whole list, doing 5, then 10, then 20 seconds (or repetitions for the moving stretches) for each exercise and side if the exercise is asymmetrical. Also known as a “circuit”.

Exercises

  1. Arm across chest
  2. Arm up and behind head
  3. Supinate wrist (asymmetric, perform stretch with opposite hand)
  4. Rotate both wrists, right wrist turning clockwise, arms at 90deg to torso
  5. Rotate arm through full shoulder range of motion, going upwards in front of the torso
  6. Supinate both wrists together in prayer hands in the small of the back
  7. Rotate both wrists, right wrist turning counterclockwise, arms at 90 degrees to torso
  8. Pronate wrists against each other in front of the torso
  9. Rotate shoulder open (palm presses against a vertical surface, arm parallel to the ground and fully extended, rotate torso so that the arm is behind the torso and the stretch mostly in the pectorals and anterior bundle of the deltoids)
  10. Rotate head clockwise
  11. Rotate head counterclockwise

Frederick Delavier’s Stretching Anatomy is an essential book on this topic.

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