Best Stretching Exercises For Beginners

Highly sought-after personal trainer and sports scientist Luke Worthington outlines the best stretching exercises for beginners.

Whether you’re a complete beginner to mobility training, or you’re not the best at remembering to squeeze in those post-workout stretching exercises, you’re in the right place.

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Health and wellbeing has five measurable components: 

• Strength 
• Work capacity (cardio fitness) 
• Mobility  
• Body composition 
• Emotional wellbeing

A well-rounded programme should be looking to address all five. They may not all feature with equal priority all of the time – depending on individual goals – but none of them should ever be ignored.

You might also like these daily mobility stretches

The training adage of ‘use it or lose it’ is something that most can relate to when it comes to pursuing goals of strength, speed or improving body composition. However, the same is also true when it comes to mobility.

Why stretching is important:

Training and maintaining our ability to move through the greatest range of motion that we can safely control, while maintaining integrity of the joints, is key to getting the most from our workouts, as well as reducing the risk of injury.

Smart mobility training should allow us to gradually progress available motion without compromising joint integrity – this means choosing exercises that prioritise alignment and control over range.

The stretching exercises in this series are suitable for beginners and are designed to keep the core stable, and the four major joints centred, while encouraging movement in the places most people experience tightness – namely glutes, hip flexors, adductors (inner thigh), upper back, and ankles. Conveniently these are also the areas that, when we move through them appropriately, increase our performance in strength training. 

Related content:

1. Best hip stretches
2. Best shoulder stretches
3. Full-body stretching routine for men

How to do these stretching exercises for beginners:

These stretching exercises for beginners are great to perform on their own as a dedicated mobility programme or active recovery session, or as a dynamic warm-up before a strength workout. 

If performing them as a standalone session, my suggestion is to work through them in circuit fashion and perform 4 complete circuits. 

If performing these exercises as a dynamic warm-up, the intent should be to move swiftly from one exercise to the next, helping to elevate the heart rate as you mobilise your whole body.

I would suggest starting with these stretches for a few weeks until you’re comfortable moving your body through these ranges, and start to be aware of how it feels to move into ‘tight’ areas.

Once you’re comfortable with these movements, you can move onto our pick of the best more advanced stretching exercises.

However, I should also point out that these beginner movements do not become redundant. I have many clients who have used these as their warm-up for years, and I often revisit them myself after 25 years in the industry. 

Best Stretching Exercises for Beginners

1. All-Fours Glute Mobilisation
2. Adductor Rock Back
3. Side-Lying Windmill
4. Half-Kneeling Hip Flexor Mobilisation
5. Knee to Wall Ankle Mobilisation

Keep reading for full instructions.

All-Fours Glute Mobilisation

Reps: 8 each side

• The hips should rock back and toward the side that has tucked in the foot.

Adductor Rock Back

Reps: 8 each side 

• Sit the hips back onto the heels before rotating through the upper body – this keeps the motion coming from the upper back. 

If you like these stretching exercises, check out our guide to yoga for beginners

Side-Lying Windmill 

Reps: 6 each side

• Try to keep the navel pointing forwards as the upper body rotates away – this helps to get the movement from the upper back.   
• Ensure that your gaze (and therefore the head) follows the fingertips of the moving arm. 

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Half-Kneeling Hip Flexor Mobilisation

Reps: 6 each side 

• In the set-up, ensure the knee is directly below the hips, and tense the glute as hard as possible on the knee touching the floor.  
• The forward rock is actually very small in this exercise – it should be no more than 1-2 inches. 

Knee to Wall Ankle Mobilisation

Reps: 10 each side

• A good target distance away from the wall is one foot width.   
• Ensure all of the weight is on the front foot as you rock forward, keeping the heel grounded.

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