Stretching before and after your elliptical workout is essential for your fitness routine. It doesn’t matter if you are overweight or have some knee troubles.
At any moment, a heavy-duty elliptical may provide you with a fantastic low-impact exercise. Warming up helps prevent injuries and gets your body ready to perform at its best.
Table of Contents
Benefits of Stretching
Stretching improves the flexibility and range of motion of your muscles. After years of debate, it has been determined that dynamic stretches, which simulate the activity to be performed or perhaps a low-intensity exercise or sets of exercises, are best performed before your elliptical session, whilst static stretching is best performed after your workout or warm-up.
If you use the elliptical regularly for lengthy periods, you may develop overuse issues. Stretching maintains your hip, thigh, and buttock muscles flexible and fluid instead of tense, lowering your risk of injury. For some great pre-elliptical stretches, keep reading.
Top 5 Pre-Elliptical Stretches
1. Step Stretch
This action targets both the calves and the shins. Stand on a step with your right foot to the rear and just the ball of your foot on the platform to conduct a step stretch.
Bend your left knee while you press your right heel toward the ground. Before repeating on the opposite side, hold the stance for 30 seconds.
2. Wall Stretches
Because you’ll be using your legs throughout an elliptical exercise, make sure they’re thoroughly warmed up before you begin. This is one of our favorite ways to stretch the calves since it can be done anywhere, at any time.
Stretching against a wall is a simple way to do this. Place your left foot behind your right and stand in front of a wall to do a wall stretch.
Maintain a lunge position by keeping your left leg straight and pressing your heel into the floor. Straighten your legs till you feel a stretch in your calves towards the rear. Before swapping sides and continuing the stretch, hold this position for 30 seconds.
3. Trunk Rotations
Trunk rotations promote leg, shoulder, and core strength and flexibility, as well as body temperature. To execute trunk rotations, lie on your back with your knees bent and your feet flat on the floor.
Place your arms at your sides and squeeze your shoulder blades together while keeping your neck flat on the floor. Twist the torso to the left while rotating the legs and keeping the right shoulder blade and forearm flat on the floor. Before swapping sides, hold the position for 5 minutes.
4. Pike Stretch
The hamstrings and calves are targeted in this workout. While standing with your legs shoulder-width apart, reach down and touch your hands in front of your toes.
While you walk forward, keep your hands shoulder-width apart and your legs straight as you form an inverted “V” with your body. This is quite similar to the yoga stretch known as “downward dog.” With your feet on the floor, hold the stretch for 30 seconds.
5. Butt Kicks
Butt kicks are a great method to warm up your leg muscles while increasing your core body temperature. Butt kicks warm up the legs while also warming the torso.
Butt kicks are done by bending your knee and kicking your lower leg behind you until your heel comes into contact with your glutes.
Summary of Stretching Before Elliptical
Even though elliptical machines reduce stress on your leg joints, you still work out with muscular strength. As a result, muscle injuries are possible.
Extending promotes flexibility, and stretching the proper muscle areas when using an elliptical trainer is critical for ensuring your safety.
Warming up properly improves muscle temperature, endurance, and speed, allowing you to run faster and leap higher. It also increases your range of motion and emotionally warms you up, increasing your motivation and focus.